Mady Mesplé

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France's most famed lyric coloratura-soprano and one of the world's greatest, Mady Mesplé was born in Toulouse, on March 7, 1931 and was operatically active from the early 1950s to the late 1980s.

Mesplé was a student of piano for 17 years and funded her studies at the Conservatoire de Toulouse – where, among others she was taught by the wife of French novelist André Malraux - by playing piano in a local ballroom orchestra and as an accompanist at the Conservatoire itself.

She made her mainstage début in the title role of Léo Delibes 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 in Liège, to add Lucia di Lamermoor and the Queen of the Night in Mozart’s The Magic Flute to her résumé. In 1956 she joined the Opéra-Comique in Paris. A year later she made her Parisian Opéra Garnier début, where she sang Constance in Francis Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites, Oscar in Giuseppe Verdi's Un ballo in maschera, and multiple roles in Ravel's L'enfant et les sortileges.

Truly a coloratura-soprano, she improvised dazzling embellishments and cadenzas that shined with her brilliance and agility(not to mention her lightning-like trills). Mesplé has performed all the major roles for coloratura-sopranos, from Juliette to Olympia to Lucia to Rosina (Barbiere di Seviglia) to Gilda (Rigoletto).

Since the beginning, the quality of her voice has been compared to that of Dame Joan Sutherland. In 1960, at the Parisian Opéra Garnier, Mesplé transposed Lucia's Mad Scene to a higher key (F) immediately after Sutherland had sung it abroad. Although her voice was somewhat thin, she was noted for easily hitting a high A flat, and for having a fast vibrato.

Mesplé has graced most of the influential opera houses in the world: Parisian Palais Garnier, New York’s Metropolitan Opera, Bolshoi Theater of Moscow, London’s Covent Garden, and Milan’s La Scala. She taught at conservatories in Nice, Lyon, and Bordeaux, including many master classes. During the 1960s, Mesplé branched out into newer music. Charles Chaynes composed his Four Poems of Sappho for her, and in 1963 she premiered Gian Carlo Menotti's opera The Last Savage. She was also the first to sing the French version of Hans Werner Henze's Elegy for Young Lovers in 1965, and Pierre Boulez chose Mesplé for his performances of Arnold Schoenberg's Jacob's Ladder.

Mesplé's discography is split fairly equally between French operetta (especially Jacques Offenbach), opera, and recital literature. Although her Lakmé eclipses her other operatic recordings in recognition and popularity, her Werther (with Georges Prêtre) and Guillaume Tell (with Lamberto Gardelli) are oustanding. Her most notable song recording is of the complete songs of Ravel with Dalton Baldwin, Gabriel Bacquier, and José van Dam.