Teresa Berganza In Memoriam

Dear friends of Mirlo,

Last week I said goodbye to two women who accompanied important moments in my life. And I bring today, a vital and necessary reflection...

Both belonged to that generation in which the role of mother and wife marked the lives of women in an expansive way, influencing every detail of their behavior, with all that this implies, for better and for worse.

One of them, Mari, was a confidant, accomplice, and warm support in private matters - and since they are private, they should stay that way. Of course, she left me the wonderful legacy of love and friendship from her family, and that is a treasure.

The other is Teresa Berganza, and I think it's fair to share what she meant to me as a singer and as a person.

My father, Jorge, was a great opera fan; and Teresa Berganza was one of his favorite singers, both for her artistic quality and for her overwhelming personality. I remember following her interviews together, especially one she gave to France Musique about the upcoming extraordinary premiere of his Carmen... Years later, on the same evening of my father's sudden death, he and I listened to our record of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, with Teresa Berganza and Mirella Freni. A few months later, a friend of my mother's and Teresa's desk friend, gave me her address and I dared to tell her about my collection Cuéntame una Ópera. Teresa answered me with a phone call. It was at the time of the child's bath, and it caused me so much emotion that there was almost a flood in the house... When I told her that I was going to start a website, and that I would love to interview her, she immediately perked up, assuring me that I had her support for my work promoting opera since I was a child. She told me some anecdote about her children, but that once again enters the sphere of what I believe is private.

Be that as it may, the interview was carried out, but I did not do it myself, as Mirlo went in my stead with the questions for Teresa that we had collected from some classmates of my son Manuel at his music school.

Today, that interview is not only a very special reminder of Teresa's generosity, but I think it is testimony to a time when the quality of artistic expression was based above all else on human refinement, rather than wasted media. And it is not that the means were scarce, but rather that the means, the technologies, were nothing more than means, tools, to which no more value was attributed than human creativity. The latter is a reflection that she left in the air...

However, for the publisher's website we have recovered the interview we did with Teresa, so you can enjoy it with the memory of her incomparable art, right there.

A couple of years after that interview, I had the opportunity to meet Teresa in Madrid and speak with her personally for a few moments. There were also the occasional phone call... His comments on some works, on his concert with his daughter Cecilia Lavilla at the Barcelona Liceo, even on some of my illustrations, as well as his voice singing through the telephone wire are gifts from the life that still moves me today.

I appreciate all the legacy received from my elders, and more than ever I feel the responsibility to pass it on to the next generations. Sometimes I feel that there is a lot of effort to erase the past, and yet the present is full of the past, and the future will be the result of what we build now. It is a matter of learning from mistakes and selecting the best when looking forward. Our values - the value of friendship, family, our culture, music and art as an expression of the most human of experiences - are something that we must defend and transmit as our best legacy.

Teresa, Mari and Jorge are and will always be with me.

Georgina Garcia-Mauriño

P. S.: Manuel has promised me that he will continue this well-deserved memory of our Teresa in a future newsletter with the memory of some of his unforgettable roles and music, which we have enjoyed so many times as a family.