Possessing a big voice, although she used it somewhat coarsely, the Triestine Fedora Barbieri (1918-2003) was one of a number of front-ranking Italian mezzo-sopranos active in the 1950s and 1960s, including Ebe Stignani (1903-1974), Giulietta Simionato (b.1910), Elena Nicolai (1912-1985) and Fiorenza Cossotto (b.1935). In her home town she studied with Federico Bugamelli and Luigi Toffolo, and in Milan with Giulia Tess. In 1940 she made her début at the Comunale, Florence as Fidalma in Il matrimonio segreto, then in 1943 married the Director of the Florence May Festival. Although the war interrupted her career nevertheless in those years she appeared in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Belgium, Hungary, The Netherlands and Austria. No sooner was peace declared than her international progress was rapid: in 1946 from La Scala, Milan, the following year she travelled to the Colón, Buenos Aires; in 1950 to Covent Garden, London and the Metropolitan, New York, and also to San Francisco and Chicago. Her repertory in her palmy days included rôles such as Dalila, Azucena, Amneris and Eboli, which she sang under de Sabata and Giulini. She created Dariola in the première of Alfano’s Don Giovanni di Manara at the May Festival in 1941 and in 1942 was Telemaco in Dallapiccola’s revision of Monteverdi’s Il ritorno di Ulisse in Patria. In Siena that year she sang Giustina in Pergolesi’s Flaminio, and in 1943 at Cremona, Orfeo in Vito Frazzi’s edition of Monteverdi’s

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