Opera Scotland

Alda Noni Suggest updates

Born Trieste, 30 April 1916.

Died Cipro, 17 May 2011.

Italian soprano.

Alda Noni was perhaps the most successful Italian light lyric soprano in the decade after the war, performing regularly in Vienna as well as at Glyndebourne and Edinburgh in a range of soubrette roles.

She studied in Trieste and Vienna, making her debut as Rosina in 1937 at Ljubljana. During the war she was based at the Vienna State Opera. A highlight of that period was a performance of Zerbinetta at a special staging of Ariadne auf Naxos to celebrate the composer's eightieth birthday. During those years, her other roles included Norina, Despina, Oscar, Gilda and Violetta.

Back in Italy from 1944, she appeared in Trieste as Lucia, Adina and Mimì, before singing Susanna, Rosina, Norina, Adina and Lucia in Rome. She later appeared at Venice, Naples and Bologna, reaching La Scala in 1948 as Carolina in Il matrimonio segreto.

Her British debut, in 1946, was in Pomeroy's company at London's Cambridge Theatre, when she sang Norina in Don Pasquale with the Malatesta of the masterly bass-baritone Mariano Stabile. She made her Glyndebourne company debut in 1949, as Oscar at the Edinburgh Festival, and returned the following year as Despina and Blonde (in Sussex). She eventually came  for a total of six seasons, and was also a member of the Scala company that visited Covent Garden in 1950, when she sang Nannetta in Falstaff.