ABSTRACT
Cathy Berberian, the late great singer-whom no female performer has been able to equal since-always regretted that she was not able to convince opera house directors to let her interpret Bizet's Carmen. And so because this legitimate desire of hers remained unfulfilled during her lifetime, it assumed the feeble physiognomy of a dream. To those who still remember her for real, that particular lack of fulfillment leaves us one more disappointment: La Berberian could have recreated Carmen like nobody else, unrivalled as she still is in today's music. Her obvious and necessary professional acquaintance with a number of living composers-characters generally very boring-prevented her from crossing into the world of the melodramatic operatic canon and, as a consequence, during the last years of her life, she had interpreted the not-completely-orthodox repertoires much more frequently. She alone (re)invented extraordinary recitals of nineteenth-century salon music, while taking a genial excursion along the Beatles' track.
