Cecilia Fusco

Maria Cecilia Fusco (10 June 1933 – 26 November 2020) was an Italian operatic soprano and voice teacher. In a long career, she appeared regularly at La Scala in Milan, and leading opera houses in Italy and abroad. Her broad repertoire included works from early Italian opera to premieres of contemporary opera.

Fusco was born in Rome and grew up there in a musical family. Her father Giovanni Fusco was a composer of film soundtracks, whose music is linked to films by Michelangelo Antonioni and Jean-Luc Godard, among others. Her mother was Adriana Dante, pianist and pupil of Alfredo Casella. Frequent guests of the Fusco family, which included Goffredo Petrassi, Franco Ferrara, Guido Turchi, Francesco Siciliani  and Franco Mannino, helped the young Cecilia develop a strong musicality.

Fusco studied at the Conservatorio Santa Cecilia in Rome and won the Puccini competition of the RAI. She made her debut in 1958 at the Teatro Margherita in Genoa as Gilda in Verdi's Rigoletto. In 1960, she appeared at La Scala in Milan for the first time, as Barbarina in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, conducted by Herbert von Karajan. She also appeared there as Lisa in Bellini's La sonnambula, Musetta in Puccini's La bohème, and as Katja in the world premiere of Guido Turchi's Il buono soldato Svejk on 5 February 1962. Other operas at the house included Donizetti's Don Pasquale, Ariadne auf Naxos by Richard Strauss, Rossini's La scala di seta, Jacopo Napoli's Miseria e nobiltà and Handel's Serse. Un ballo in maschera, La serva padrona, Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride, Pergolesi's Stabat Mater.