Bruna Castagna was a successful student of piano in Milan before switching to singing as a pupil of Tina Scognamiglio. Her operatic stage début, as Marina/Boris Godunov at Mantua’s Teatro Sociale in 1925, was swiftly followed by her début as Suzuki/Madama Butterfly at La Scala, Milan, where she remained between 1925 and 1928. The conductor Tullio Serafin was instrumental in her engagement by the Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires, between 1927 and 1930, where she participated in the local première of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sadko. Castagna was again active at La Scala during  the 1929–1923 and 1930–1931 seasons, singing Erda among other rôles, and participated in the first performance of Felice Lattuada’s Don Giovanni at the San Carlo, Naples, during 1929. Admired by Toscanini as a singer who could do full justice to the technical demands of Rossini’s bel canto operas, she enjoyed great success at La Scala, where she continued to perform between 1932 and 1934, singing Isabella/L’italiana in Algeri in 1933. During the same period she gave her first performance as Carmen, which was to become one of her signature rôles, at the Teatro del Liceu in Barcelona.

By now in demand throughout Europe, Castagna appeared in France, Germany and Romania, as well as in Egypt and Australia, before singing in America at Chicago and San Francisco and scoring another big success in concert at the New York Hippodrome in 1934. Henceforth she was to be active only in the USA. She made her Metropolitan Opera début in March 1936 as Amneris/Aida, quickly followed by a highly dramatic Azucena/Il trovatore and Carmen. During the summer of 1936 she sang Carmen before an audience of 15,000 at New York’s Lewisohn Stadium, about which the critic Pitts Sanborn wrote: ‘The mantle of the great Carmens has fallen upon her, and royally she wears it.’ Other rôles which she sang at the Met included Santuzza/Cavalleria rusticana, Adalgisa/Norma, Ulrica/Un ballo in maschera, Dalila/Samson et Dalila and Laura/La Gioconda. The critic Lawrence Gilman described her as a singer with ‘temperament and artistic tact’.

Married to the conductor Alberto Paccolini, Castagna made her final appearance as Carmen in Philadelphia in 1950 before retiring to Italy to teach. Although she made a number of studio recordings, she is perhaps principally remembered through the recordings of live performances from the Met and live concerts with Toscanini.

© Naxos Rights International Ltd. — David Patmore (A–Z of Singers).