Freda Betti

Freda Betti was born at 52 rue des Ponchettes in the district of "Vieux-Nice" in a modest family : his father Pierre Betti was a house painter and his mother Madeleine Suaut was a fishmonger. His paternal family originates from the region of Emilia-Romagna in Italy : his grandfather Ferruccio Betti was born in Parma in 1862 and he immigrated to Nice with his wife Clémence Fontana and his children in the late 1890s. She studied music and especially singing with Édouard Rouard at the Conservatory of Nice where she obtained a "Premier Prix de Chant" in 1943. She made her debut at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo in 1947 singing the role of Siébel in "Faust" by Charles Gounod. She appeared frequently with the "Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France" of the RTF in the early 1950s, before entering the troupe of the Opéra-Comique in the 1960s. She sings on major national scenes (Bordeaux, Nantes, Nice, Rouen, Strasbourg, Toulouse) and European (Monte Carlo, La Scala) and in many opera festivals (Aix-en-Provence, Avignon, Bayreuth). Among his repertoire include Fricka by Richard Wagner ("The Valkyrie"), Dulcinea by Miguel de Cervantes y Saavedra ("Don Quichotte"), Suzuki by Giacomo Puccini ("Madama Butterfly"), Brangäne by Richard Wagner ("Tristan and Isolde") and especially Carmen by Georges Bizet, she performs over 150 times. She also participated in the creation of the "Opéra d'Aran" by Gilbert Bécaud in 1962 at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. She dedicated to the teaching of singing at the Conservatory of Monaco in the 1970s. Freda Betti married with René Clermont (1919-1976) in 1949 in Levallois-Perret (Hauts-de-Seine).