Rosa Raisa was an opera star in Chicago in the early 20th century, who was featured in the La Scala premier of Turandot at the request of composer Giacomo Puccini.
Operatic contralto Cyrena van Gordon, from left, soprano Rosa Riasa and tenor Antonio Cortis, circa 1932.
He set down his baton and, his voice choking with emotion, announced: “Here is where the maestro died.’’ Raisa later recalled. Raisa was Polish-Jewish. She was born in 1893 in Bialystok, a city then ruled by the Russian czar and regularly subject to pogroms, like the one she witnessed in 1906. Returning home after going into hiding, “I passed a hospital where hundreds of dead people lay scattered on the ground of the courtyard, victims of the enraged savage mobs,” she later recalled.The experience prompted Raisa to leave Bialystok and join a relative who found refuge on the Italian island of Capri.
“And from the first day I arrived, Chicago has been my home,” she told Studs Terkel in 1959. “You have opened your arms and you still love me, and I still love the people, my friends of Chicago.”The notices of her 1913 debut in Verdi’s “Aida” were favorable, but the company’s director warned the press that, as a young performer, she would have “diamond in the rough moments.” She was 20 and didn’t return for four years.
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Rosa Raisa, the Chicago prima donna Puccini tapped for a premiere at Milan’s La ScalaRosa Raisa was an opera star in Chicago in the early 20th century, who was featured in the La Scala premier of Turandot at the request of composer Giacomo Puccini.
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