Eugenia Ratti (b.1933) made her début at Sestri Levante in 1954. The following year she joined the company at La Scala, Milan, as Lisa in Visconti’s famous production of Bellini’s Sonnambula in which Callas sang. Thereafter, through the rest of the 1950s, a typical soubrette, she progressed through rôles such as the Priestess in Aida, Oscar and Zerlina, and took part in the first performances at La Scala of Milhaud’s David and Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites. She made a visit to the Holland Festival in 1955 and appeared in 1959 at San Francisco and Dallas, where she deputised for Callas’s Rosina in Zeffirelli’s production of Il barbiere di Siviglia.