Amelia Izquierdo

Singer, soprano and pedagogue.

She pursued musical studies in the United States, Spain and Paris, and years later perfected them in Italy, where she assumed leading roles in famous operas such as La Bohème, by Puccini, and Faust, by Gounod.

She performed concert tours throughout France, Germany, Sweden and Denmark. In Cuba she only gave performances at charity galas and private concerts accompanied on piano by Emilio Agramonte. As a pedagogue she founded a school of singing and lyric recitation.

In Paris she studied under Henri Duvernois and Paul Lhéire and in Italy, under Cesare Rossi and Salvatore Cottone. She performed in concert in France, Germany, Sweden and Denmark and performed in the operas —Faust (Marguerite) and La bohème (Mimì)—. She returned to Cuba in the early twentieth century and around 1909 founded in La Habana an Academy of Singing and Lyric Recitation, which soon acquired great prestige in its time.

She promoted and directed complete opera productions with orchestra performed by her students, among whom was her daughter, the soprano Graziella Lewenhaupt, who seemed to have a promising future, but died in her youth, on August 11, 1936.

Amelia Izquierdo died in her native city, on January 18, 1960.