25 January 2022
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Two Monaco stamps, issued on 17 March 2022, honour opera singers Victor Maurel and Felia Litvinne
OPERA SINGERS - VICTOR MAUREL
Born in Marseille in 1848, the French baritone Victor Maurel was one of the greatest opera singers of his time, admired for his incredible technique, his musicality and his dramatic talent.
His collaboration with Verdi brought him legendary status. In 1881, at Milan’s La Scala, he starred in the world premiere of the second version of Simon Boccanegra, and then in the premieres of Otello in 1887 and Falstaff in 1893. He constantly expanded his repertoire. Composers wrote new roles for him and he was part of the world premiere of Isidore de Lara’s Moina in Monte-Carlo in 1897, a very dark opera about the Irish rebellion against their oppressors in the late eighteenth century.
Maurel spent his final years in New York where, in 1908, he founded an opera school and gave private lessons to leading movie actors.
Design: Cyril DE LA PATELLIÈRE
Line-engraving: Pierre ALBUISSON
Printing process: 4 colours steel-engraving
Size of the stamp: 40,85 x 52 mm vertical
Quantity of issue: 36 000 stamps
Sheet of 6 stamps with illuminations
OPERA SINGERS - FELIA LITVINNE
Born in St Petersburg in 1860, Felia Litvinne was a Russian dramatic soprano, who became a naturalised French citizen in 1893.
She was a student of Victor Maurel, who gave her her debut in 1883 with the Théâtre-Italien in the role of Amélia in Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra.
Her powerful voice, with its flexible and brilliant timbre, caused a sensation. It was her appearances in works by Wagner that turned her into a legend: she was the first Brünnhilde, the first Isolde and the first Kundry in Parsifal in 1913 on the stage of the Monte-Carlo Opera.
She is considered to be the greatest Alceste (in the opera by Christoph Willibald Gluck) in history. She is one of the rare female voices to have stood the test of recording (around forty).
Design and line-engraving: Sarah LAZAREVIC
Printing process: 6 colours steel-engraving
Size of the stamp: 40,85 x 52 mm vertical
Quantity of issue: 36 000 stamps
Sheet of 6 stamps with illuminations
