Miguel Burro Fleta (28 December 1897, in

Albalate de Cinca Albalate de Cinca is a municipality located in the province of Huesca, Aragon, Spain. According to the 2004 census (INE INE, Ine or ine may refer to: Institutions * Institut für Nukleare Entsorgung, a German nuclear research center * Institut ...

Province of Huesca Huesca ( an, Uesca, ca, Osca), officially Huesca/Uesca, is a province of northeastern Spain, in northern Aragon. The capital is Huesca. Positioned just south of the central Pyrenees, Huesca borders France and the French Departments of Haute-G ...

, Aragon – 29 May 1938, in

A Coruña A Coruña (; es, La Coruña ; historical English: Corunna or The Groyne) is a city and municipality of Galicia, Spain. A Coruña is the most populated city in Galicia and the second most populated municipality in the autonomous community and s ...

) was a Spanish operatic tenor. Despite his short stage career, lasting from 1919 to 1935, Fleta has been described as one of the most significant Iberian opera singers of the 20th century. Among the important international venues at which he sang were La Scala, Milan, (in 1923-26) and the New York

Metropolitan Opera The Metropolitan Opera (commonly known as the Met) is an American opera company based in New York City, resident at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, currently situated on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The company is oper ...

(in 1923-25). Additionally, in 1926, he had the honour of creating the role of Calaf in

Puccini Giacomo Puccini ( Lucca, 22 December 1858Bruxelles, 29 November 1924) was an Italian composer known primarily for his operas. Regarded as the greatest and most successful proponent of Italian opera after Verdi, he was descended from a long ...

's posthumously-premiered final opera, ''

Turandot ''Turandot'' (; see below) is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, posthumously completed by Franco Alfano in 1926, and set to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni. ''Turandot'' best-known aria is " Nessun dorma", ...

'', at the insistence of La Scala's principal conductor, Arturo Toscanini. But this taxing dramatic role took him to the limit of his resources and he did not attempt it again. Fleta made his operatic debut in Trieste in 1919, having previously studied voice at the Madrid conservatory. Successful engagements in Rome followed, leading to his La Scala and Met debuts. He quit the Met in acrimonious circumstances, however, and the resultant legal action stopped him performing again in the United States. He was celebrated during his best years for the finesse with which he used his rich, flexible voice. The most notable aspect of his performance style was the nimbleness of his bel canto technique. This enabled him to produce spectacular messa di voce and

pianissimo In music, the dynamics of a piece is the variation in loudness between notes or phrases. Dynamics are indicated by specific musical notation, often in some detail. However, dynamics markings still require interpretation by the performer dependin ...

effects. Unfortunately, Fleta's singing became increasingly self-indulgent as his career progressed. By the late 1920s, as recordings show, his voice had deteriorated badly, with his

vibrato Vibrato ( Italian, from past participle of " vibrare", to vibrate) is a musical effect consisting of a regular, pulsating change of pitch. It is used to add expression to vocal and instrumental music. Vibrato is typically characterised in terms ...

loosening to an undesirable extent. Fleta died in straitened circumstances in 1938. He nonetheless left a legacy of sometimes fascinating records, many of which are available on CD reissues.

References

*''The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera'' (second edition), edited by Harold Rosenthal and John Warrack, Oxford University Press, London, 1980. *''The Record of Singing'', Volume Two, by Michael Scott, Duckworth, London, 1979.

External links

History of the Tenor - Sound Clips and Narration
1897 births 1938 deaths People from Cinca Medio Spanish operatic tenors Singers from Aragon Conservatori Superior de Música del Liceu alumni 20th-century Spanish male opera singers Spanish expatriates in the United States {{spain-opera-singer-stub