Mady Mesplé, France's most famed lyric coloratura and one of the world's greatest, was born in Toulouse, France in 1931 and was operatically active from the early 50's to the late 1980s. Mesple was a student of piano for 17 years and funded her studies at the Conservatiore de Toulouse by playing piano in a local jazz band and as an accompanist at the Conservatioire itself. She made her mainstage début in the challenging role of Lakmé-a role that she would perfect and perform over 145 times in her career. She went on, after her début in 1953, to the Belgian National Opera, to add Lucia and the Queen of the Night to her résumé. In 1956 she joined the Opéra-Comique in Paris. A year later she made her Paris Opéra Garnier début. This French lyric, regarded as one of the "sweetest divas and with an equally divine voice-spanding 4 octaves- to have ever hit this Earth." Truly a coloratura, Mesplé was famed for telling the conductors "Laissez moi faire mes cadenzas,eh?!" ("Let me do my cadenzas, eh?!") and improvised dazzling embellishments and cadenzas that shined with her brilliance and agility(not to mention her lightning-like trills). Mesplé has played all the roles many sopranos dream of-from Juliette to Lucia to Lakmé to Rosina (Barbiere) to Gilda (Rigoletto) to Oscar (Ballo in Maschera) etc. Since the beginning, the quality of her voice has been compared to that of Dame Joan Sutherland-something that...eh, shall we say... brought out the diva in Mme. Mesplé. In 1960, for example, at the Opéra Paris, Mesplé transposed Lucia's Mad Scene to a higher key (F) immediately after Sutherland had sung it abroad. Mesple has graced most of the influential opera houses in the world: Palais Garnier, The Met, Bolshoi Theater of Moscow, Covent Garden, and the hallowed halls of La Scala.
"Mesplé may be rivaled by some. But they are few. Precious few" said Charles Chaynes, "But in the lyric coloratura range, she is the best."
This profile was edited with Thomas Myspace Editor V3.4
