Fiorenza Cossotto

Fiorenza Cossotto was born in Crescentino, Piedmont, in April 1935 and studied at the Turin Conservatory under Ettore Campogalliani. She made her début at La Scala in 1957 as Sister Mathilde in the world premiere of Poulenc’s *Dialogues des Carmélites* — a production in which she sang alongside Virginia Zeani, Leyla Gencer and Eugenia Ratti.

She became the leading Verdi mezzo of her generation in Italy and one of the principal international interpreters of the repertoire. Her central roles — Azucena in *Il trovatore*, Eboli in *Don Carlo*, Amneris in *Aida*, Ulrica in *Un ballo in maschera*, Laura in *La Gioconda*, Santuzza in *Cavalleria rusticana* — became identified with her voice through her appearances at La Scala (where she sang almost annually from 1957 to 1988), the Metropolitan Opera, the Vienna State Opera, Covent Garden, the Paris Opéra and the Salzburg Festival. Her vocal partnership with the tenor Carlo Bergonzi and the soprano Renata Tebaldi was particularly important in the studio recordings of the 1960s. She was married to the bass Ivo Vinco.

Cossotto retired from staged opera in 2002 after a final Azucena at Modena, then settled in Milan. Music Preserved’s archive includes a substantial range of her Verdi mezzo work from the 1960s and 1970s.