P R E F A C E                                        


First of all; I would like to state that this is not a conventional blog. My purpose is to create a sort of an archive where one can access to all kinds of information about Leyla Gencer’s art which can be found separately in various websites.
Caterina Cornaro, New York, Carnegie Hall, 1973
Photo: © ERIKA DAVIDSON, New York




On the main page there’s a biography consisting of eight main chapters that I wrote including some information given to me by Leyla Gencer herself. And in the column on the right there’s a chapter containing information about Gencer’s opera performances, concerts and recitals that I gathered from various press and opera archives. The content of the mentioned column is based mainly on the biographical books of Franca Cella and Zeynep Oral; whereas I added the “cast lists” which I personally gathered from opera house archives and some websites. I’m certainly not hundred percent sure about the reliability of each data. I accessed too many articles about Gencer’s concerts in Turkey and abroad in the archive of Cumhuriyet newspaper; which I added to the blog. If you find out any inaccuracies in the blog or retain some more data about Leyla Gencer; I’d be delighted if you could share them with me. For instance; in the book “A story of passion”; Zeynep Oral wrote about Gencer’s performances of Luisa Miller and Manon Lescaut; but yet I was unable to find out at which opera houses or venues these operas were performed. Information that I’ve been searching is that as Leyla Gencer had told me herself, she had attended the rehearsals of Wagner’s Tannhauser but due to a strike at the opera house, the performances were canceled. I still haven’t found out the name of the mentioned opera house and the year in which the production was supposed to be realized.

The lists containing Gencer’s recordings, press reviews, awards and the memorial ceremonies can also be found in the column on the right.

I have attached the Youtube links of all her recordings under each opera title to which they are related. 

Deh! non volerli vittime from Norma

Video ©  Selçuk Metin / Borusan Sanat

I have tried to do my best in mentioning the copyright owners of the photographs that I used from the internet; nevertheless it’s not been possible to name each photographer. I’d be delighted if anyone who has such information or claims that some photographs should be excluded from the blog because of copyrights could contact me.

Sadly I haven’t been able to access to articles about Gencer published in the German, Polish, French and Norwegian press due to my limited knowledge in those languages. I’d again be delighted if you could share your knowledge regarding this necessity. I sincerely hope that this “Blog” will be improved by time and it will turn into a website in the future.

HÜRRİYET DAILY NEWSPAPER

2021.07.07