Graziella Sciutti

Graziella Sciutti (17 April 1927 – 9 April 2001) was an Italian soprano opera singer and later vocal teacher and opera producer.

Sciutti was born in Turin, Italy. Her parents were musical, her father being an organist; her mother was French. She studied privately with Ginevra Marinuzzi, then in Rome at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia under Rachele Margliano-Mori with the intention of making a career on the concert platform. From 1948 she participated in broadcasts on Italian Radio, her first being L'oca del Cairo.

Sciutti's concert debut was in 1949 in Venice, with 18th-century Italian songs. Her stage debut at Aix-en-Provence in 1951 singing Elisetta in Il matrimonio segreto and the woman in The Telephone and realized that she "was a person who could do opera". She appeared as Rosina in Rossini's The Barber of Seville in 1954. Later she appeared in London at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (debut 1956 as Oscar in Un ballo in maschera), at Salzburg, Vienna and in San Francisco.

Referred to as "The Callas of the Piccola Scala" Sciutti was renowned for her interpretation of Mozart's "soubrette" characters, Susanna, Despina, and perhaps especially for her singing in the role of Zerlina in the 1959 recording of Mozart's Don Giovanni, with the Philharmonia Orchestra under the direction of Carlo Maria Giulini. She created the title role in Sauguet’s Les caprices de Marianne in 1954.