Emma Calvé

Rosa-Noémie Emma Calvé (actually Calvet) de Roquer was a flamboyant soprano and mezzo-soprano with a rich, powerful, well-equalized and superbly trained voice. Furthermore, she was a slim, attractive woman and a powerful actress. Her family moved from the village of her birth to northern Spain three months after she was born; she grew up speaking a mixture of French, Spanish, and Basque. Self-dramatizing in her biographies, she said she learned to sing and dance from watching the local gypsies and that later she learned the secret of pure high notes from Domenico Mustafà, one ...