Laure Cinti-Damoreau
Laura Cinti-Damoreau (6 February 1801 - 25 February 1863) was a French soprano particularly associated with Rossini roles.
Life and career
Born Laure-Cinthie Montalant in Paris, she studied in Paris with tenor Giulio Marco Bordogni and soprano Angelica Catalani, and made her professional debut at the Théâtre-Italien in Paris, in Una cosa rara by Vicente Martin y Soler, later singing Cherubino and Zerlina.
After complementary studies with composer Gioachino Rossini, she sang in the Paris premiere of Elisabetta, regina d'Inghilterra, and created roles in Mosè in Egitto (the French revision) and Il viaggio a Reims.
She made her debut at the Paris Opera in 1826, where she created roles in other Rossini operas such as; Le comte Ory, Guillaume Tell, Le siège de Corinthe, and also took part in the creation of notably; Auber's La muette de Portici and Le domino noir, and Meyerbeer's Robert le diable.
She taught at the Paris Conservatory from 1833 until 1856, and published a "Méthode de chant" in 1849, still available today as "Classic Bel Canto Technique". She also produced a notable series of "notebooks" where she wrote down in music notation her own embellishments to key sections of many roles and arias she performed. These notebooks are currently kept at the Lilly Library (Indiana University) and are a major primary source for the study of bel-canto performance practice and Rossini scholarship.
She was married to tenor Vincent-Charles Damoreau (1793-1863) from 1828 until 1834, with whom she had a daughter, Maria Cinti-Damoreau, also a soprano, who married the librarian-composer Jean-Baptiste Weckerlin.
She died in Chantilly.
Sources
- Giorgio Appolonia, Le voci di Rossini, EDA, Torino 1992, pp. 300–309
- Roland Mancini and Jean-Jacques Rouveroux, (orig. H. Rosenthal and J. Warrack, French edition), Guide de l’opéra, Les indispensables de la musique (Fayard, 1995). ISBN 2-213-59567-4
- http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/lilly/mss/index.php?p=helm
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