Happy Birthday: Claudia Muzio

"O del mio amato ben" Donaudy

Born in Pavia, Claudia Muzio was the daughter of an operatic stage manager, whose engagements during her childhood took the family to opera houses around Italy as well as to Covent Garden in London and to the Metropolitan Opera in New York. She arrived in London at the age of 2 and went to school there, becoming fluent in English, before returning to Italy at the age of 16 to study in Turin with Annetta Casaloni, a piano teacher and former operatic mezzo-soprano who had created the role of Maddalena in the world première of Verdi's Rigoletto. Muzio then continued her vocal studies in Milan with Elettra Callery-Viviani.Muzio made her operatic début in Arezzo (January 15, 1910) in the title-role of Massenet's Manon, and despite