Emma Calvé

Rosa Emma Calvet , known as Emma Calvé , born with Decazeville the August 15th 1858 and died with Millau the January 6th 1942, is a French singer of opera (mezzosoprano), which was illustrated in particular in the role of Carmen.

Born in Decazeville, raised in these Causses of the Larzac of which it will have all its life moved nostalgia, it began with the Currency from Brussels in 1882 in the role from Marguerite from Faust. As from 1892, she sang regularly with the Royal Opera House of London and with the Metropolitan Opera New York. She created the role of Suzel in the Ami Fritz of Mascagni to Rome, on October 30th, 1891. Massenet created for it the role of Anita in the Navarrese and that of Sapho in the opera of the same name entrusted to him. Carmen, whom she sang more than thousand times, would have been enough to establish her celebrity, in particular on the other side of the Atlantic.

Applauded and adulated by the whole world, Calvé lived “like a queen”. Everywhere acclaimed, Emma will sing in the Indies, in Japan, in Australia. It is in 1904, at the time of the thousandths of Carmen, the great role of its life, which it gives up the opera, while continuing until 1926 giving concerts in the whole world. Adulated Americans, it entonna the Marseillaise in New York in 1916, in front: 30000 people: the triumph was memorable. With the ridge of its glory, it had acquired in 1894 the Château of Cabrières close to Aguessac (Aveyron), before reselling it with an industrialist gantier a few years later. She died in the destitution, after having devoted to the teaching of her art the last seasons qu´elle passed to Cabrières.

Considered for his dynamic personality, one found his photography in the shelves of Chocolat Foal. Impassioned Hindouisme and of Occultism, it passed to attend the cabaret of the Black Cat, with Paris, in company of Mucha, Papus, and Camille Flammarion. In 1942, a star dies out in Montpellier, in anonymity. Planetary star, Emma Calvé was the immense professional singer of the Beautiful Time, adulated by the crowned crowd and heads; its hot voice of mezzosoprano, an extent rare with powerful notes of chest and acute fabulous the, expert one in magic spells, raised an emotion comparable with the hysteria of the dilettanti of today.

She wrote her autobiography, Under all the ciels I sang , appeared in Paris in 1940.

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