Fethullah tarikatının önemli yayın organlarından Bugün gazetesinde gerici bir kalem, ”Leyla Gencer’in külleriyle boğazı kirlettiler. O modern Türkiye’nin bir ürünüydü. Ama asla bizim tercihimiz değildi” diye yazdı.

Sanki herşey, hep bu yobaz din tacircilerinin tercihlerine uygun olması gerekirmiş gibi, birde üstüne ahkam kesip; ”külünü İtalya’da bıraksaydı” demiş.

Hala ortaçağ kafası taşıyanların, inanç özgürlüğüne olan saygısızlığı o gerici kalemin, şu iki kelimelik cümlesinde tamamen ortaya çıkmış oluyor aslında.

”Suyumuzu kirletmeyin”

20.yüzyılın en büyük iki soprano sanatçısından bir tanesi olan, “La Diva Turca”diye anılıp, dünyayı kendisine hayran bırakmış Gencer’in, doğarken sanki kendi şeçme hakkı varmış gibi annesinin Polonyalı olmasına ve tercih ettiği kendi cenaze törenine bile çamur atıyorlar. Kaldı ki ben, sanatçının dindarlığına veya dinsizliğine bakılmaması gerektiğine inanırım.

Aklıma, bundan birkaç ay önce haklı düşüncelerini özgürce ifade edebildiği için, kara cüppeliler tarafından ölüm tehtitleri alan, dünyanın tanıdığı birkaç Türk’ten biri olan piyanistimiz Fazıl Say geliyor.

Şimdi partileri kapatılmasın diye Avrupa birliğinin eteklerine sarılanları, aynı birliğin ısrarla; Krematoryumlar kurunuz talebi geldiğinde ne yazacaklarını düşünüyorum.

Smokin giymeyi gavurluk sayan zihniyetten başka bir şey beklememek gerekir zaten.

Promosyonlu namaz

Geçen hafta Kayseride bir firma, gazeteye ilan vererek sabah namazı kılanlara kahvaltı vereceğini duyurmuştu. Amaç, unutulduğunu iddia ettikleri sabah namazına cemaati toplamakmış.

Bu kadarını duymamıştım ama promosyonlu namazıda icat ettiler sonunda. İşin asıl güldüren tarafı ise, bu uygulamadan şikayet eden ve cemaati kaptırdığını düşünen etraftaki diğer camilerin imamları.

Şimdi insanlar namaz kılacak, peki ne için? İbadet için mi yoksa bir parça kuru börek için mi?

Diyelim unutulduğunu düşündekleri namaz vakti için insanlar camiyi doldurdu. Peki kahvaltı için eda edilecek namaz, İslamın istediği gibi şuurlu bir ibadet olacak mı?

Ya da bir başka zaman birileri çıkıp, biz öğlen vakti için hamburger, yanınada milk shake isteriz derse ne olacak?

”İşi büyütüyoruz”

Bir bakkal, inancı gereği ve camiye yakın olduğu gerekçesiyle alkollü içki satmıyordu. Bende canım içki çektiği zaman biraz daha uzakta bulunan markete gidip alış veriş yapıyordum. Geçen gün baktım inançlı bakkalın içinde hummalı bir inşaat çalışması var. Merak ettiğim için içeri girip sordum; hayrola yoksa taşınıyormusunuz dediğimde aldığım cevap beni hem dumura uğrattı, hemde daha uzak satıcıya gitme derdinden kurtaracağı için sevindirdi.

”Yok abi işi büyütüyoruz. Raflara bira ve diğer tekel ürünleri koyup satacağız.”

Cümlemize hayırlı olsun dedim ve evin yolunu tuttum.

Cem Akkılıç

18 Mayıs 2008

* * *

Leyla Gencer’in anısına.

* * *
Yüzbinlerce yazı arasında
En çok okunanlar

The Independent (UK), May 15th, 2008

Elizabeth Forbes

The Turkish soprano Leyla Gencer became one of the most loved and admired operatic idols in Italy during the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies. Although she sang all over Europe and America, from London to Vienna, from San Francisco to Buenos Aires, it was in Italy, at La Scala, Milan, at the San Carlo, Naples, at La Fenice, Venice, at the opera houses of Rome, Florence, Turin, Trieste and many other cities, that she spent the main part of her career, singing a very wide repertory whose core consisted of the works of Donizetti and Verdi. A singing actress of great expressive power, she used her voice as a weapon in her dramatic armoury. That did not mean that she could not, when appropriate, sing with great gentleness and beauty of tone.

She was born Leyla Ceyrekgil in Istanbul in 1924. Her father was Turkish, her mother Polish and she was educated at an Italian high school and liceo. She studied at the Ankara Conservatory with the Spanish coloratura Elvira de Hidalgo, and in 1946 married a banker, Ibrahim Gencer.

Leyla Gencer made her operatic debut in 1950 in Ankara as Santuzza in Cavalleria rusticana. After further study with the Italian soprano Giannina Arangi-Lombardi and the baritone Apollo Granforte, she went to Italy, where she made her debut in 1953 at the Arena Flegrea in Naples, again singing Santuzza. Later in the season she sang the title role of Madama Butterfly at the San Carlo.

In 1956 Gencer went to San Francisco, where she made her debut in the title role of Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini. During the next two seasons she also sang the title role of Lucia di Lammermoor, Violetta in La traviata, Massenet’s Manon, Gilda in Rigoletto and Elisabeth in Don Carlos. Elisabeth would become one of her finest Verdi roles, which she repeated with great success at La Scala (1960), the Vienna State Opera and at Covent Garden (1962), where she sang the role in an emergency when Gre Brouwenstijn became ill. Gencer was in London rehearsing Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, which should have been her debut role.

Gencer first appeared at La Scala in 1957, singing Madame Lidoine, the new prioress, in the world premiere of Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmelites. Later that year she sang Leonora in La forza del destino, another favourite Verdi role that suited her passionate temperament extremely well. In 1958 she took part in another premiere, of Pizzetti’s Assassinio nella Cattedrale, based on T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral, in which she sang the First Woman of Canterbury. The opera was conducted by Gianandrea Gavazzeni, who became a mentor to the soprano throughout her career. He conducted her as Maria in Pizzetti’s Lo straniero (1969) in Naples.

Gencer sang two early Verdi roles, Lucrezia in I due Foscari in Venice (1957) and Lida in La battaglia di Legnano in Florence (1959) before returning to 20th-century opera with Renata in Prokofiev’s The Fiery Angel at the 1959 Spoleto Festival. In 1960/61 she sang again at La Scala, as Paolina in Donizetti’s Poliuto, taking over from Maria Callas, and as Lisa in Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades. Her Lisa was an unexpected success, and she sang it again at Turin in 1963. Meanwhile she sang her first attempt at the title role of Bellini’s Norma at Barcelona in 1962, repeating it the following season at the Coló*in Buenos Aires.

As related, Gencer made an emergency debut at Govent Garden in Don Carlos in January 1962, before she sang Donna Anna in February in Franco Zeffirelli’s new production of Don Giovanni. But Mozart was not one of Gencer’s strongest suits: far better was Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, which she sang at Glyndebourne in 1965, conducted by Gavazzeni. Anna was always one of Gencer’s finest roles and even in 1977, not long before she retired, she gave a wonderful performance of it in Rome.

Otherwise, during the Sixties Gencer sang Elena in Jerusalem (the Paris version of Verdi’s I Lombardi) and the title role of Bellini’s Beatrice di Tenda at La Fenice in Venice; Queen Elizabeth I in Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux in Naples; and Aida at La Scala and in the Verona Arena, where she was a great favourite. Gluck’s Alceste was much applauded in Rome in 1967, even better liked at La Scala in 1968 and liked best of all at La Scala in1972, with Gavazzeni in the pit.

In the last decade of her career, Gencer had several new roles that were, vocally and dramatically, very well suited to her abilities. One of these was Ponchielli’s La Gioconda, but one small point annoyed purists: Gioconda describes herself as blonde, but Gencer wore her own black hair. Another very popular role was the heroine of Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda, which she first sang at the Florence Maggio musicale and then in Naples. Verdi’s Lady Macbeth, which Gencer sang under Gavazzeni’s baton in Venice, and later in Rome and Florence, scored even greater triumphs.

Other Donizetti roles in which Gencer was greatly admired included Lucrezia Borgia, which gave the soprano scope for every conceivable emotional expression. She sang it first in Naples, then in Rome, Bergamo, Dallas and Florence; Antonina in Belisario in Venice, Bergamo and Naples; Caterina Cornaro in Naples and Pauline in Les Martyrs (the Paris version of Poliuto) in Bergamo were all great rarities, very well sung.

But Gencer’s finest performance in the Seventies was not in an opera by Donizetti, but in Mayr’s Medea in Corinto in Naples. In very good voice she was, as always, totally involved in the drama going on around her.

Leyla Ceyrekgil, opera singer: born Istanbul 10 October 1924; married 1946 Ibrahim Gencer (deceased); died Milan, Italy 9 May 2008.

Le Monde (France), 14 mai 2008, 21

Renaud Machart

La soprano turque a souffert du statut de légende vivante de sa rivale, Maria Callas. Les témoignages de son art ont le plus souvent été captés sur le vif

Comme il est coutume de dire que la contralto britannique Kathleen Ferrier (1912-1953) occulta l’importance de sa consoeur hollandaise Aafje Heinis, ou que la carrière de la soprano autrichienne Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (1915-2006) brima celle de Lisa della Casa, il est souvent prétendu que la soprano turque Leyla Gencer, qui vient de mourir, à Milan, samedi 10 mai, à l’âge de 79 ans, a souffert du statut de légende vivante de sa rivale Maria Callas (1923-1977). Comble de malchance pour Gencer, une autre rivale fameuse, Renata Tebaldi (1922-2004), s’interposa entre elle et Callas… Mais si le chant essentiellement apollinien de Tebaldi ne pouvait se comparer par sa nature à celui de Callas, l’engagement dramatique de Gencer le rappelait en bien des points.

A l’époque de ses débuts à la Scala, dans la première mondiale, en italien, des Dialogues des carmélites, de Francis Poulenc, en 1957, Leyla Gencer était souvent affectée aux deuxièmes distributions de l’illustre maison milanaise, tandis que Callas régnait sur les premières. Mais ” la Diva turque “, qui avait fait ses débuts à Ankara, en 1950, aura chanté un répertoire plus large (72 rôles), qui, outre le bel canto italien (avec une prédilection pour Donizetti), comprenait des créations et des opéras du XXe siècle ainsi que beaucoup de raretés oubliées de l’opéra italien du XIXe siècle qu’elle servait avec un respect scrupuleux du texte et de ses indications. Gencer partageait avec Callas un caractère trempé et ombrageux et les anecdotes à propos de ses ” caprices ” ne manquent pas.

En dépit d’une rivalité entretenue surtout par les partisans de la Grecque et de la Turque, Gencer reconnaissait cependant, dans un entretien en anglais transcrit sur le site Internet www.belcantosociety.org [http://www.belcantosociety.org] que Callas ” avait la voix la plus imparfaite du monde, mais cela ne veut rien dire. Elle était pleine de défauts, mais elle avait le feu sacré. Elle était merveilleuse. Qui l’égale aujourd’hui ? “.

Un chant engagé

Si Callas est aujourd’hui aussi connue que du temps où elle chantait sur scène, c’est notamment en raison d’un legs discographique important. Leyla Gencer a quant à elle peu enregistré en studio, et les témoignages de son art sont le plus souvent captés sur le vif et publiés dans des éditions pirates, en opéras séparés ou en coffrets anthologiques. On trouve beaucoup d’extraits filmés, certains publiés officiellement (par la firme américaine Vai), d’autres reproduits par des particuliers sur des sites Web, dont YouTube.

Le chant de Gencer était extrêmement engagé, et ses incarnations dramatiques allaient parfois à l’encontre de la beauté du son. Elle manquait d’agilité, mais le timbre était superbe et sa musicalité en aura touché plus d’un. Sa qualité première est demeurée un aigu pianissimo dont elle a parfois abusé, surtout lorsque le tonus de la voix lui manquait et que le vibrato la gagnait dans les nuances fortes. La chanteuse reconnaissait d’ailleurs qu’elle avait donné ” davantage de mauvaises représentations que de bonnes “.

On l’entend ainsi se produire, à 50 ans, à l’Opéra de San Francisco, avec la voix d’une chanteuse en toute fin de carrière. Mais ce document, reproduit sur le site www.youtube.com, est, comme tant d’autres, enregistré dans des conditions précaires et donc sujet à caution. Gencer ne se retirera de la scène lyrique qu’en 1985 et ne donnera plus que des concerts, jusqu’en 1992. Ensuite, elle s’est consacrée à l’enseignement, notamment à la Scala de Milan, où elle fut directrice du programme pour les jeunes chanteurs à l’instigation du chef d’orchestre Riccardo Muti.

Après une crémation à Milan, le 12 mai, ses cendres devaient être dispersées dans la baie du Bosphore, dans son pays natal.

10 octobre 1928, Naissance à Istanbul

1953, Débuts italiens à Naples

1957, Débuts à la Scala de Milan : rôle de Madame Lidoine lors de la création mondiale des ” Dialogue des Carmélites ” de Francis Poulenc

10 mai 2008, Mort à Milan

The Guardian (UK), May 13th, 2008, pg. 34

Patrick O’Connor

Leyla Gencer, who has died aged 79, was the greatest Turkish opera singer of the 20th century and a singing actor of formidable power and individuality. Although she came from what she herself referred to as a “Muslim and oriental” background, she had the good fortune, as a student in Istanbul, to study with the famous Italian dramatic soprano Giannina Arangi-Lombardi, so that when she went to Italy in 1953, she was thoroughly grounded in the traditions of Italian opera.

Gencer was a very beautiful woman, with large dark eyes, a wide, generous mouth and a natural command of the stage. Born Leyla Ceyrekgil in Istanbul, the daughter of a Turkish Muslim father and a Polish Catholic mother, she married Ibrahim Gencer, a wealthy banker, in 1946; he eventually predeceased her. She made her debut as Santuzza in Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana at the open-air summer festival in Naples in 1953, and remained a particular favourite with the Neapolitans.

Her early successes were in verismo roles – Madama Butterfly, Tosca, Francesca da Rimini (by Zandonai). By 1957 she had been engaged by La Scala, Milan, where she created the role of the New Prioress in the world premiere of Poulenc’s Les Dialogues des Carmelites, and shortly after sang the title role in La Traviata at the Vienna Staatsoper, under Herbert von Karajan.

Throughout her career, Gencer had a very wide repertoire, ranging from Monteverdi, Gluck and Mozart to Verdi, Ponchielli and Puccini. During her career she sang virtually every soprano role in Verdi’s operas, but it was especially in the revival of bel-canto works by Bellini, Donizetti and Pacini that she made her mark. To some extent, Gencer shot to fame in the immediate aftermath of the end of Maria Callas’s Italian career – Gencer followed Callas as Anna Bolena at La Scala, and in the role of Paolina in Donizetti’s Poliuto – the last new part Callas undertook. As Queen Elizabeth I of England, first in Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux, and then in Rossini’s Elisabetta, Regina d’Inghilterra, Gencer preceded Montserrat Caballe and Beverly Sills, who later recorded the roles.

Gencer’s voice was not a natural dramatic soprano – she sang all the coloratura roles, such as Lucia, Elvira (Puritani), Amina, Gilda. The sound had a strange, smokey quality which could – and quite often did – turn sour and detracted from the pleasure of her singing. “We’re in great luck tonight,” said the impresario Denny Dayviss, when I met her at the San Carlo in Naples in 1972, “Leyla-gal’s in great voice.” The opera was Donizetti’s Caterina Cornaro, in which Gencer was partnered, as often before, by Giacomo Aragall. Gencer tore into the role of the daughter of St Mark, the Venetian girl who becomes Queen of Cyprus, her voice ranging from fiercely declaimed dramatic recitative right up to a ringing high E with which she capped the first-act finale.

Although Gencer’s career was mostly in Italy, she appeared in the United States, where she made her debut in San Francisco as Lucia in 1957, returning there, as well as to Chicago and Dallas. John Ardoin described her voice in a memorable Lucrezia Borgia in 1974, as “poignant, compelling” and mentioned the “strange colours and deep pathos of her art”. In England she was heard at Glyndebourne as the Countess in Figaro, and as Anna Bolena. At Covent Garden she was Donna Anna in Zeffirelli’s 1962 production of Don Giovanni, then Elisabeth de Valois in Don Carlos. Gencer’s most memorable UK appearances were undoubtedly in the title role of Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda, at the Edinburgh Festival in 1969. The sparks that flew on stage in the confrontation – historically absurd but dramatically thrilling – when Gencer as Mary Stuart ripped off her glove and flung it in the face of Shirley Verrett as Elizabeth I at the words, “Vil bastarda” will surely live in the memory of all who witnessed it.

As a recitalist Gencer also had a wide repertoire of 19th and early 20th-century songs. Some of her later appearances were in recital in Paris at the Athenee in the 1980s, when a young French public, who had never had the opportunity to see her on stage, proved receptive to her high-flown style and hailed her as the greatest living prima donna. Gencer had no career whatsoever as a recording artist, but many of her broadcasts from Italian radio have now been issued on disc and are a fine memorial to her voice and dramatic ability. Especially noteworthy are performances of Verdi’s I due Foscari (under Serafin), Donizetti’s Belisario (from Venice in 1970) and Simon Boccanegra, from the 1959 Salzburg Festival, in which she is partnered by Tito Gobbi.

Gencer said of herself: “I am a fatalist and am instantly resigned to adversity, my temperament is gentle and I am incapable of putting up a fight for anything.” None of this was evident on stage, where she projected a suberb sense of dramatic power. In 1987 she was the first recipient of the Donizetti Prize awarded by the city of Bergamo, and in 1995 the Leyla Gencer Voice Competition was established in Istanbul. In recent years she was artistic director of La Scala’s academy for advanced courses for opera singers.

Leyla Gencer, soprano, born October 10 1928; died May 9 2008

The New York Times (USA), May 13th, 2008, pg. 6

By Margalit Fox

Leyla Gencer, an operatic soprano who was among the last of a generation of larger-than-life divas that included Maria Callas, died on Friday at her home in Milan. As befits a prima donna, Ms. Gencer’s exact age was shrouded in carefully arranged mystery; she was believed to be either 79 or 83.

The cause was heart failure and respiratory problems, La Scala and the Turkish State Opera and Ballet told The Associated Press. Information on survivors was not made public.

Popularly known as La Diva Turca, Ms. Gencer performed in opera houses throughout Europe and the United States from the 1950s to the 1980s. Although her major career was in Europe — she sang at La Scala in Milan for many years — she was also admired by fans, and at least some critics, on this side of the Atlantic.

Ms. Gencer (pronounced GHEN-djer) sang more than 70 roles but was most closely associated with the bel canto style of Donizetti. Her singing was characterized by a burning intensity but was also widely praised for its exquisite pianissimo — the attainment of maximum audibility at minimum volume that eludes even many fine singers.

Though Ms. Gencer appeared on many of the world’s major stages, among them Covent Garden in London, she never sang at the Metropolitan Opera. She did not make her New York debut until 1973, when she sang the title role in Donizetti’s little-known opera ”Caterina Cornaro” in a semi-staged production at Carnegie Hall by the Opera Theater of New Jersey.

By this time, Ms. Gencer was 50, give or take. Reviewing her performance in The New York Times, Harold C. Schonbergwrote: ”Her voice shows signs of the abuse that comes from overwork and an insufficient technique. She clearly was an experienced singer of the old arm-waving school, and the middle range of her voice had moments of appealing beauty. But the top is virtually gone, and fortissimo high notes emerged in ear-splitting yells.”

Leyla Ceyrekgil was born in Istanbul on Oct. 10. Ms. Gencer was publicly coy about the year; sources give it variously as 1924 or 1928. The daughter of a Polish mother and a Turkish father, she grew up on the city’s Asian side.

From an early age, according to published accounts, she showed signs of the intensity that would serve her well. As Stefan Zucker wrote in a biographical article on the Web site of the Bel Canto Society (www.belcantosociety.org [http://www.belcantosociety.org]), ”Her mother pulled her out of a lyceum at 16 because she had fallen in love with a 34-year-old Polish architect with whom she read Plato.”

Leyla enrolled briefly at the Istanbul Conservatory before leaving to study privately in Turkey with the noted Italian soprano Giannina Arangi-Lombardi. She later studied with the Italian baritone Apollo Granforte.

In 1946, she married Ibrahim Gencer, a banker. ”She was temperamental and difficult,” Mr. Zucker wrote, ”but he loved her.”

In 1950, Ms. Gencer made her operatic debut in Ankara, as Santuzza in Mascagni’s ”Cavalleria Rusticana.” She made her La Scala debut in 1957, as Madame Lidoine in the world premiere of Francis Poulenc’s ”Dialogues of the Carmelites.” Her United States debut was with the San Francisco Opera in 1956, in the title role in Ricardo Zandonai’s ”Francesca da Rimini.”

Ms. Gencer’s other roles included Verdi (Amelia in ”Un Ballo in Maschera,” Violetta in ”La Traviata,” Leonora in ”Il Trovatore” and Aida), Mozart (the Countess in ”The Marriage of Figaro” and Donna Elvira in ”Don Giovanni”) and title roles in Donizetti’s ”Lucia di Lammermoor,” Bellini’s ”Norma” and Puccini’s ”Madama Butterfly.”

In 1995, an international voice competition named for Ms. Gencer was inaugurated in Turkey.

Pre-empted by better-known contemporaries like Callas and Renata Tebaldi, Ms. Gencer did not have a contract with a major commercial record label. But her voice traveled the globe many times over in bootleg recordings, earning her the nickname the Pirate Queen.

If she ”never made a lira” from these recordings, as Ms. Gencer told Opera News in 2003, they had other compensations.

”All the young people know me,” she said at the time. ”They write me long letters. They tell me: ‘It’s as if we were in the theater. We see you. We hear you through your discs as if we were there.’ This is a great miracle!”

Sep 7, 2006 8:26 pm
La Vestale is quite sadly represented in the catalog by many recordings of almost universally poor audio quality. If any opera ever deserved a fine high fidelity recording with good singers and a strong orchestra and conductor it would be this one.

I think Callas really benefits from the lack of audio fidelity here. Her recording allows her dramatic flare to show through untainted by her grating tone. I find Rosa Ponselle’s 1935 recording to be just the opposite, her beautiful full tone sounds weak and anemic while her surprising lack of drama feels rather static to me.

While Leyla Gencer’s 1968 recording of “Tu che invoco” does not strike me as very inspired I am very happy with her, and the entire cast’s, overall performance that keeps the excitement going throughout.

Renee Mazella’s 1964 version has the best sound quality I have heard on any recording of this work—unfortunately on possibly the weakest performance.

My favorite is Renata Scotto’s 1970 version. She has a good sense of pacing—sometimes light, sometimes dramatic. The variation keeps it interesting whereas Callas seems to me to be always screaming which becomes uninteresting, even irritating after a while. I find Scotto’s voice and technique to be better up to the task than any of the others, although I think Gencer is very good in the context of the entire performance.

I have never seen an English translation of the libretto and my Italian is very limited so I never really feel like I have anything but the vaguest idea what is going on at any time. If anyone knows of an English translation online it please let me know.