Maria Gay (12 June 1876Spanish Civil Registry, Barcelona
year 1876, entry number 2932
– 29 July 1943) was a Catalan opera singer, a mezzo-soprano born as Maria de Lourdes Lucia Antonia Pichot Gironés. She has sometimes been referred to as Maria Gay Zenatello.

Biography

According to one story, young Maria was arrested for singing revolutionary or nationalist songs. She defiantly continued to sing them in prison, with a voice so fine she was offered a chance to study bel canto. She was a singing pupil of soprano

Ada Adini Ada Adini (1855 – February 1924) was an American operatic soprano who had an active international career from 1876 up into the first decade of the 20th century. She possessed a large, expressive voice which enabled her to sing a broad range of ...

. In 1897, she married the Catalan composer , with whom she had two daughters and a son, all of whom died young: her daughters of illness as teenagers and her son in the war. In 1902, she debuted in the title role of '' Carmen'' in

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

. She was a hit in the role and became one of the best regarded interpreters of "Carmen" of her era. She reportedly shocked and mesmerized audiences, portraying the gypsy girl as an impudent, magnetic, but coarse and unrefined peasant, eating an orange and spitting out the seeds before singing the famous Habanera. In 1906, she debuted at

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

's La Scala, where she met

tenor A tenor is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the countertenor and baritone voice types. It is the highest male chest voice type. The tenor's vocal range extends up to C5. The low extreme for tenors is wide ...

Giovanni Zenatello. Gay and Zenatello would live together the rest of their lives, and were often described as husband and wife, although they may never actually have gotten married, and legally Maria Gay may still have been married to Joan Gay Planella until his death in 1926. In 1908, she made her debut in ''Carmen'' for the Met in New York City opposite Geraldine Farrar as Micaela. In 1910 she performed the same role with the Boston Opera Company as Carmen. She made a series of

gramophone records A phonograph record (also known as a gramophone record, especially in British English), or simply a record, is an analog sound storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The groove usually starts near ...

for the

Columbia Phonograph Company Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese conglomerate Sony. It was founded on January 15, 1889, evolving from the Ame ...

. Gay and Zenatello worked to find, help train, and promote promising young singers. Their most famous find was

Lily Pons Alice Joséphine Pons (April 12, 1898 – February 13, 1976), known professionally as Lily Pons, was a French-American operatic soprano and actress who had an active career from the late 1920s through the early 1970s. As an opera singer, she s ...

, who the couple managed until Pons and the couple had a falling-out. Gay and Zenatello set up a home in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

, New York City in 1936, where she lived the rest of her life. She died on 20 July 1943. Maria Gay was buried in

Ferncliff Cemetery Ferncliff Cemetery and Mausoleum is located at 280 Secor Road in the hamlet of Hartsdale, town of Greenburgh, Westchester County, New York, United States, about north of Midtown Manhattan. It was founded in 1902, and is non-sectarian. Fernc ...

Hartsdale, New York Hartsdale is a hamlet located in the town of Greenburgh, Westchester County, New York, United States. The population was 5,293 at the 2010 census. It is a suburb of New York City. History Hartsdale, a CDP/hamlet/post-office in the town of Green ...

References

External links

Maria Gay's discography can be searched at the National Library of Catalonia
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gay, Maria 1876 births 1943 deaths Opera singers from Catalonia 20th-century Spanish women opera singers 19th-century Spanish women opera singers Operatic mezzo-sopranos Burials at Ferncliff Cemetery