Mirella Freni Tries the Slalom

By Michael Walsh

Europe's great lyric soprano is expanding her career--maybe

First there are the eyes, great brown pools that can reflect a doe's yearning or flash with Mediterranean fire.

The dark blond hair is pulled back, exposing a face still vulnerably cherubic at 46. The nose is a little broad, the lips full.

Vibrant and attractive, she could be a successful businesswoman or a television newscaster. But then Mirella Freni opens her mouth to sing. And suddenly there is only the voice--the voice of the world's foremost lyric soprano.

In an age when many singers stretch their repertories by taking on roles unsuited to their voices and thus hasten the end of their careers, the Italian-born Freni has remained close to her lyric roots. She comes from the world of the poor, consumptive Mimi in Puccini's La Boheme and the sparkling, scheming Susanna in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. Despite taking on some distinctly heavier parts, mostly Verdi heroines, in recent years--Aida, Desdemona in Otello and Elisabeth in Don Carlos--she is still rightly regarded as the finest Mimi and Susanna around. "The dramatic soprano voice is big, and for the coloratura you must have the high notes," says Freni. "But the lyric voice is about quality of expression. It must sing easily and softly in the high notes. I think I am really pure lyric."

Freni is familiar to American audiences from several excellent popular opera recordings--La Boheme and Madama Butterfly with Supertenor Luciano Pavarotti, Aida and Don Carlos with Tenor Jose Carreras, all conducted by Herbert von Karajan--as well as from films of Boheme and Butterfly shown here in 1965 and 1976. She captivated audiences at her U.S. debut as Mimi at the Metropolitan Opera in 1965 with her technical accomplishment and winsome vocal timbre. But Freni's talent still far outshines her American reputation. Her career has been primarily European: between 1968 and 1976 she did not sing in the U.S. at all. True, there were what she describes as "minor tax problems" with the Internal Revenue Service in 1966, but they were not what kept her away. The reason, she says, was motherhood.

"When my daughter was a little girl, I try to stay in Europa, to stay home with her," says the reluctant diva in her own Italo-English. Indeed, Freni temporarily quit the stage after the birth in 1956 of her daughter Micaela, born the year after Mirella's professional operatic debut and named for her role in Bizet's Carmen. It took two years of appeals by her husband, Pianist Leone Magiera, her coach and accompanist, to persuade her to resume her career. "Later, I am singing with La Scala, Covent Garden, Paris, Vienna, and it is difficult to come to America, I am so busy. Now I try, come si dice, to do a little slalom." She makes a wavy motion with one hand, skirting imaginary obstacles to illustrate the difficulty of fitting the U.S. into her European schedule. But she will: a Boheme in Houston and a Romeo et Juliette in Chicago later this year, Mascagni's obscure II Piccolo Marat at the Met in 1983.

One of her infrequent American appearances occurred earlier this month at the Tanglewood festival in Lenox, Mass.

In recital, the Freni voice was heard in its full splendor, as tonally pure as ever, colored with a golden sheen but possessing that greater richness that comes with age to singers who have taken care of their voices. In a program of opera arias and art songs, this new texture enhanced what was already a remarkable instrument. Her impassioned performance of Tu che la vanit`a from Don Carlos showed that she can sing more demanding music with out forcing her tone or altering the quality of her voice.

This has come as a surprise to those who have always thought of her as essentially a lyric soprano, including Freni. Says she: "When I started, I thought Mozart and La Boheme would be the maximum for me." For challenging her to expand her range she credits Karajan, the controversial, magisterial Austrian conductor who has played Svengali to her Trilby. It was with Karajan at La Scala that she came to international attention, singing Mimi in Franco Zeffirelli's 1963 production of La Boheme, and it has been with Karajan at his Salzburg Festival that she premiered some of her weightier roles, like Aida in 1979. "He said to me, 'Mirella, I want you to sing Aida. You can do the line I want. I don't like Aida screaming.' " After the first rehearsal, the orchestra broke into applause, and Karajan embraced her. He told her, "Mirella, if I could be a singer I would sing just like you."

People have been applauding Freni since she was five years old. First to recognize her talent was her uncle, who noticed that little Mirella could sing along with his recording of Lucia di Lammermoor. Later, Freni recalls: "When I was 10 1/2, my uncle remembered that I could do this, and he put on the record for my father. He said, 'Please, Mirella,' and they discovered I had the voice." Two years later, she won a national competition with her singing of Puccini's Un bel di. One of the judges, Tenor Beniamino Gigli, advised her not to rush her career. Said Gigli: "You are young. Don't force your voice." Wisely, she waited until 1955 to make her formal debut.

Freni retains a low profile in the high-strung operatic world. She and Magiera quietly separated after Micaela was married, and Freni now shares a Milan apartment with Basso Nicolai Ghiaurov. Says Freni of their relationship: "He can help me, just as I can help him. We try to appease " each other with love and humanity."

Not for her is the traveling publicity circus of Modena's other great singer born in 1935, Pavarotti. "I am very happy for Luciano, he is like a brother to me. But it is not my character. I like my privacy. I enjoy singing, I enjoy creating something with my voice. But when it is finished, it is finished." The great American hype machine is wasted on Mirella Freni.

"Sometimes I think I am really strange," she says, her eyes gazing off into the distance. "I never think to have a big career. When the time comes, I hope to find the forza to retire in time. I say to my daughter, 'Micaela, you take me ou of the stage when you hear it is the end.

She say, 'Mamma, don't worry!' I love to sing, not to have a big career. I am free, choose the quality of my life. And I have done it."

--By Michael Walsh

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