Olivia Bonelli

Who was Olivia Bonelli?

Olivia Bonelli - soprano, 1920-1990. Her career covered a span of almost 30 years, from the late 1940s through the 1970s. While short of attaining "super-star" status, she nevertheless enjoyed a popular, steady and accomplished vocal career. She went from a small town choir to become a soloist at New York's Radio City Music Hall, to several of the USA's major opera companies, to a debut at New York City Opera, to the Metropolitan Opera, for a special reading performance of Marvin David Levy's, "Mourning Becomes Electra." Along the way, she spent a year traveling with the USO, entertaining wounded WWII service men in hospitals across the USA, premiered new works, and pioneered in the early days of television opera. A web site, OliviaBonelli.com, commemorates her musical life and serves as an historical record of one singer's journey through the operatic world of the 1950s and 1960s.