Magda Piccarolo

Magda Piccarolo (b. 1912, Alessandria - died ?) Magda Piccarolo was trained at the Conservatorio Antonio Vivaldi in her native city where one of her teachers was the opera composer and conductor Guglielmo Zuelli. With the aid of Zuelli she began a career as an operatic soprano; Piccarolo later took care of Zuelli in his old age, with the composer living with the soprano in her home in Milan during the last years of his life.

In 1934 Piccarolo appeared in the world premiere of the revised version of Ottorino Respighi's La bella dormente nel bosco in Turin as both the Blue Fairy and the Nightingale. Two important early successes occurred in 1937 when she appeared as Gilda in Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto at the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari and as Elvira in Vincenzo Bellini's I puritani at the Teatro Massimo Bellini.

Piccarolo was celebrated in the role of Gilda and performed that part at several more opera houses, including the Politeama Genovese in 1939, the Teatro Regio di Parma in 1941; the Rome Opera in both 1941 and 1943; both the Teatro Municipale, Reggio Emilia and the Teatro Verdi in Pisa in 1943; at the Teatro Comunale Piacenza in both 1944 and 1946; and at the Teatro di San Carlo in 1949. and Neva Rego; tenor Georgi Cholakov; and Spanish mezzo-soprano Carmen Gonzalez. She was also a voice teacher at the Milan Conservatory where one of her pupils was the Venezuelan soprano Cecilia Albanese. The year and location of her death are not known.