The first Tebaldi’s biographical reference is that of the famous concert in May 1946 when Toscanini re-opened the Scala theatre, which had come back to life from the ruins of WWII. This is when Renata was nicknamed “Angel’s Voice” by the serious maestro. In May 1996, fifty years after, Riccardo Muti accepted to celebrate that event at the Scala with a concert having the same programme: Rossini, Boito, Puccini, Verdi. To sing the Verdi’s Te Deum which had given the first glory to Tebaldi was the elegant soprano Elizabeth Norberg-Schulz, already well known in the most famous theatres and with deep technical experience due to her studies at Santa Cecilia in Rome and perfecting courses with Hans Hotter, Peter Pears and Elizabeth Schwarzkopf. Such preparation allowed Norberg-Schulz to gain international success and face, with unquestionable style, a particularly refined repertoire (from Pergolesi to Mozart and Poulenc in opera and Grieg in lieder). As an example, we could mention the “refined and confident” performance of Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro conducted by Muti at the Scala in June 1997. A list of the most celebrated conductors who have called her to perform should start from Solti, Abbado and Kleiber and finish with Ozawa. In August 2011, a recital in the Marche region gave her wide positive criticism. Furthermore, when she was only a pupil, she spoke a lot about her musical experience with Schwarzkopf to Sandro Rinaldi (FOYER, RadioRAI3). Born in Oslo from a Norwegian father and an Italian mother, she showed such a perfect knowledge of our language that thinking about the similarity with the cosmetics Schwarzkopf and Schulz, (how many brunettes have used those products to avoid Northern European blond hair) we forecast for the young soprano a career as bright as that of her German teacher. Today, Elizabeth Norberg-Schulz is in the jury of the International Voice Competition in perfect tuning with the Renata of the myth.
Vincenzo Ramón Bisogni
July 2011