Margherita Grandi

Margherita Grandi (10 October 1892 29 January 1972) was an Australian-born Italian dramatic soprano.

Life and career Margherita Grandi was born Margaret Gard in Harwood Island, Clarence River, near Maclean, in the Northern Rivers area of New South Wales, Australia. When she was ten, her family moved to Tasmania and she went to school in Hobart. She left Australia in 1911 to study at the Royal Conservatory of Music in London. She also studied with Mathilde Marchesi and Jean de Reszke; and later in Paris with Emma Calvé. singing Charlotte in Massenet's Werther.

She went to Italy, where she married stage designer Giovanni Grandi,

Returning to Britain following the Second World War, she sang at the Royal Opera House from 1947 to 1950, as Donna Anna in Mozart's Don Giovanni, Leonora in Il trovatore and the title role in Puccini's Tosca, and there she created the role of Diana in Arthur Bliss's The Olympians. When news of this emerged shortly afterwards, Grandi announced that this note was not yet beyond her, and she would be singing it herself in a forthcoming concert at the Albert Hall, which she did.

Margherita Grandi's singing voice is heard in the 1948 film The Red Shoes. She retired from the stage in 1951, and died in Milan in 1972, survived by her daughter.

She can be heard on disc and in the film as Giulietta in Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann conducted by Beecham, and in excerpts from Verdi's Macbeth, La forza del destino and Don Carlos, and Puccini's Tosca. She left few commercial recordings as she was in her fifties by the time she entered the studio. She never performed in, or even returned to, her native Australia after leaving in 1911, and consequently is little known there.

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