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Fiora Corradetti Contino
Fiora Contino, born 1925, began studying music at a very early age. She held her first conducting post at the age of twelve when she substituted for the choir director at St. Ignatius Martyr Church and began her study of chant with Mother Josephine Morgan, RSCJ, at the Pius X School of Music at Manhattanville College. She found great inspiration from her father, Ferruccio Corradetti who was for many years principal baritone at leading opera houses throughout Europe and South America and a personal friend and colleague of such luminaries as Toscanini, Puccini, Caruso, Mascagni and Leoncavallo. Fiora’s sisters are the singing actress Corradina Corradetti 1895-1989), famed soprano Iris Adami Corradetti (1904-98), and fashion designer, Adriana Corradetti 1920-2010).

Arturo Toscanini wrote a recommendation for Fiora to attend Oberlin for which she was awarded a scholarship. She completed her undergraduate degree in piano performance. She founded the Amherst Company Opera (AMCOP) in 1953 and during her seven year tenure, the company achieved national recognition. Following two years of study with Nadia Boulanger she was awarded the Diplôme Hors Concours cum laudes in Direction Chorale at the Conservatoire de Musique at the Écoles D’Art Américaines. At Indiana University she earned both a master’s degree in conducting and a doctorate in opera conducting. Throughout her career, she has demonstrated her unique ability to fashion a successful academic career while developing a professional career as a conductor.

Her interests are wide ranging from chant to grand opera; early Baroque orchestral music to the music of Beethoven and Berlioz; Mahler and Prokofiev to Stravinsky and Xenakis; choral music of the Renaissance to the major choral works of J.S. Bach, Brahms, and Verdi; the operas of Monteverdi to those of Puccini.

Dr. Contino has conducted some of the nation’s finest orchestras from Alaska to San Francisco to Fort Worth to New York City’s Lincoln Center. She conducted many staged opera performances at the Ambler Festival with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.

For the performance of Madama Butterfly in which Dorothy Kirsten sang the title role, James Felton of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote

. . . last night’s production at the festival was magnificent, moving and of the very first order. . . . Fiora Contino towered over everything as the conductor and music director. She held everything together, including members of the Pittsburgh Symphony in the pit and the humming chorus stationed in the wings, with a baton that was sharp and in clear control of a magnificently coordinated performance. Her presence would do honor to any opera house in the world.

Fiora chaired the Choral Department at Indiana University, and in collaboration with Julius Herford established the graduate program in conducting which had a strong component of orchestral conducting. She was a principal conductor of the IU opera and symphonic program. During that period she also conducted performance at the Memphis Opera Theatre. Following her tenure at IU, she conducted the New Orleans Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra at the invitation of Leonard Slatkin. She then accepted a position as the director of opera and choral activities at the Peabody Conservatory and also conducted the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. John Nelson appointed her Director of the Choral Institute at the celebrated Aspen Music Festival where she was also a principal conductor for twelve seasons and later headed the Music Department at the University of Texas at Austin.

Dr. Contino was artistic director and conductor of Opera Illinois for twenty years elevating the organization to one of the most successful regional opera companies in the nation. She was invited to conduct the concert performance for the centennial celebration of Mascagni’s Iris at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in 1998 and returned in successive seasons to conduct Alfano’s Risurezzione and Cilea’s L’Arlesiana.

Her performance of Grattacielo’s production of Iris was hailed

Tonight the Teatro Grattacielo gave a concert performance of Mascagni’s Iris in Alice Tully Hall in New York. The singing varied from fine to variable, but the heroine of              the evening was the conductor, Fiora Contino. Tempi were spacious rather than propulsive (generally not             my taste, but fine here and never a problem for the singers). What stunned was that the transitions between tempi were so             carefully calibrated as to be seamless, and there was never an impression of slowness or sluggishness. The orchestra played with the sound she gave it, a warm, bottom-heavy balance that we associate more with some European orchestras than with the characteristic American brilliance.

www.fioracontino.com

Maestra—The Legacy of Fiora Corradetti Contino. Joan Whittemore, CSJ, Starrynight Publishing, 2014. Available at www.amazon.com

Wisdom, Wit, and Will: Women Choral Conductors on their Art. Compiled and Edited by Joan Conlon, Chicago: GIA Publications, 2009. pp, 363-378.