Marianna Barbieri-Nini

Marianna Barbieri-Nini was an Italian soprano, a highly dramatic singer with a powerful voice, who created three Verdi heroines. She studied with Luigi Barbieri, Giuditta Pasta and Nicola Vaccai, and her 1840 debut at La Scala, in Donizetti's Belisario, was a disaster. A second debut in Florence, as Lucrezia Borgia, was a triumph, and for the next fifteen years she sang across Italy and in Barcelona, Madrid and Paris, admired as Anna Bolena and Semiramide. For Verdi she created Lucrezia in I due Foscari, Lady Macbeth and Gulnara in Il corsaro. She retired in 1856 and taught singing in Florence.