CSILLAG, Rosa [GOLDSTEIN, Róza] (b Albertirsa, Hungary, 23 October ?1832; d 13 Singerstrasse,Vienna, 20 February 1892)

This chapter presents a biography of mid- to late-19th-century vocalist Rosa Csillag. It was in Vienna that in the early 1850s Rosa Csillag was to establish herself as one of the foremost dramatic leading ladies in national and international opera. On 5 April 1858, the Vienna company began a season in Lemberg, where Rosa appeared in Ernani, then in Lucrezia Borgia, Les Huguenots and La Juive and then headed for Krakau. Both London opera managements, it was said, had made her magnificent offers, but she turned them down. In the early part of 1860, Rosa appeared in concert and oratorio in Vienna before heading again to Paris and then – summoned, so it was reported, by telegraph – to London, where Mr Gye's Covent Garden season had just opened, with Miolan-Carvalho in Dinorah. The Times declared that Csillag was even better than Pauline Viardot-Garcia.