Cathy Berberian(1925-1983)
- Actress
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Cathy Berberian was born in Attleboro, Massachusetts to Armenian
parents, who settled in New York soon after. At Columbia University,
she studied opera, voice and diction, stagecraft, pantomime, and radio
writing under Milton Smith, Herbert Graf, and silent screen and stage
actress Getrude Keller. In 1949, Cathy journeyed abroad to the
Conservatorio di Musica Giuseppe Verdi in Milan and received vocal
training from Giorgina del Vigo. Her studies with Del Vigo were a
turning point, for under her tutelage Berberian retrained her voice as
a mezzo-soprano and discovered a vast repertoire of chamber music that
highlighted the multi-faceted qualities and texture of her voice. While
looking for a pianist to play at her Fulbright audition, Cathy was
introduced to Luciano Berio (1925-2003), at that time a composition
student and vocal accompanist at the Conservatorio. They married
shortly after on October 1, 1950 and settled in Milan, where Berberian
received her Fulbright award and where she lived for the rest of her
life. On November 1, 1953 their daughter Cristina was born. Though her
marriage to Berio eventually ended in 1964, their professional
relationship flourished during the 1960s, marked by a succession of
groundbreaking works for voice that remain essential to the vocal
repertoire today: Circles (1960), Epifanie (1959), Visage (1961), Folk
Songs (1964), and Sequenza III (1966). While Berberian was a devout
exponent of contemporary music, performing new compositions at concerts
and festivals throughout the world, she also gave nuanced
interpretations to familiar works by Monteverdi, Purcell, Stravinsky,
and Debussy, and included regularly in her recital programs music by
Weill, Gershwin, The Beatles, or salon and cabaret songs as well as
traditional folk songs. In 1966 Berberian composed her first musical
work, Stripsody for solo voice, and then in 1969, a piano composition
entitled Morsica(t)hy. Cathy Berberian's reputation as a recitalist of
new music was firmly established after her performances at the
Darmstadt Music Festival (Germany) in September 1959, and she quickly
became the muse to numerous composers who wrote new works expressly for
her, including Bruno Maderna, Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, Igor
Stravinsky, Darius Milhaud, Sylvano Bussotti, Henri Pousseur, and
William Walton, among others. Cathy Berberian died at age 57 on March
6, 1983 after suffering a massive heart attack in Rome. She was due to
appear the following day on Italian National television in a
performance to commemorate the centennial death of Karl Marx and had
planned to sing a rendition of the Communist Party anthem
"Internationale" in a 'Marilyn Monroe' style. Berberian was the most
celebrated vocal recitalist of her time. Her contributions to postwar
music are amply and unequivocally evident, and the historical impact of
her activities continues to be highly appraised.