P R E F A C E
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Caterina Cornaro, New York, Carnegie Hall, 1973 Photo: © Erika Davidson, New York |
First, 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.
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 I was unable to find out at which opera houses or venues these
operas were performed. Tannhauser was going to be Gencer's first Wagnerian Opera in Catania in
1972 but she decided not to sing the opera, couple of days before the
performances.
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.
Recording © Selçuk Metin / Borusan Sanat
2018.01.18
Deh! non volerli vittime Norma Act II Scene XI Finale
Live from Teatro alla Scala [1965.01.13]
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
