Sound advice from Celia Lobo (1937-2024), prima donna of the operatic stage in India

I’ve written many times about my “summer of ’89”. 1989 was a golden year for me. I became a doctor, which meant that as an intern I was a member of the salaried workforce.

I had money to buy every classical music cassette faster than Sinari’s, Magnasound or HMV could throw them at me, greatly expanding my horizons. But much more importantly, George and Barbara Trautwien, two excellent musicians, pedagogues and wonderful human beings, spent most of that year in Goa. I learned so much from them, not just violin technique from Professor George Trautwein, but about music as art and profession. With them I got the opportunity to learn and perform the sublime Mozart clarinet quintet among other chamber works.

I also played my first Bombay Chamber Orchestra concerts that year with Professor Trautwein wielding the baton. The second concert featured Ernest Bloch’s Concerto Grosso no 1, two operatic arias Pace mio Dio (Peace, my God) from Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi’s La Forza del Destino; and Un bel di (One fine day) from Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly sung by Bombay-Goan soprano Celia Lobo; and closed with Georges Bizet’s l’Arlesiene suite.

In retrospect, it was my first taste of opera sung live and to such a high level, with orchestral accompaniment, and here I was...

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