Genoa – Mourning in the world of opera. Soprano Celestina Casapietra has died. From Genoa, she had established herself internationally as an interpreter of Wagner. From 1965 to 1993 she was first soprano at the Berlin Staatsoper.
“My father was a great music lover,” she said in an interview. “He had a printing house (La Provvidenza, ed.) that printed theater tickets and he never missed a show. I was accustomed to listening to operas since I was little. I started with the piano, but then I moved on to singing. It was Angelo Costaguta, a famous orchestra conductor, who got me into the choir of the Teatro Carlo Felice, I was 15, for a Verdi Requiem.” At the Paganini Music Institute in her hometown, Casapietra had studied with the great Gina Cigna and then continued her training with Mario Vasquez D’Acuño. Despite her long-term commitment in Germany, Casapietra had maintained strong ties with her hometown and her theater: “I remember The Queen of Spades in the old Carlo Felice, fascinating with its red curtains,” she declared. “And then at the Margherita in 1971 a Lohengrin in which a curious thing happened: the first two acts were performed in the Italian editionbut then the opera was in danger of being suspended due to the indisposition of a tenor. A substitute then rose from the audience and offered to continue. He sang in German and so I followed suit by singing in German too, much to the audience’s surprise”.
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