TIRANA, Nov. 1 – Albania’s famous late Soprano Tefta Tashko Koco was commemorated last weekend on her 100th birth anniversary with a gala concert bringing some of the best soloists of the Opera House in Tirana performing her best arias.
The concert organized by the National Theatre of Opera and Ballet and the Culture Ministry brought on stage Edith Mihali, Mariana Leka, Ylber Gjini, Eva Golemi and Armaldo Kllogjeri in a concert dedicated to the most famous of Albania’s first generation of opera singers in the first half of the 20th century.
Tefta Tasho Koco’s official website promoted by her son, Eno Koci, a senior teaching fellow in performance classes and permanent conductor of University of Leeds Philharmonia, advertises the Albanian urban lyric songs and classical pieces recorded by soprano Tefta Tashko Ko诠in 1937 and 1942. The slim-line double case holding 2 CDs and a booklet of 8 pages gives some information about the singer and her contemporaries. The CDs were reproduced in London in September 2005.
Career
Soprano Tefta Tashko Ko诠(1910-1947) was born in Fayoum, Egypt, where her parents had emigrated from the end of the 19th century. In 1921 the family moved to Kor衬 southeast Albania, and in 1927 Tefta left for Montpellier to learn singing. Between 1932 and 1936 she studied at the Conservatoire National de Musique et de D꤬amation in Paris. When she returned to Albania permanently in 1936, apart from her programmes of operatic and chamber music, she also dedicated a great deal of effort to concentrating on learning and performing the Albanian urban lyric songs. She recorded twice for Columbia in Italy, in 1937 and 1942, a selection of the classical vocal repertoire and 45 Albanian urban lyric songs. Tefta was esteemed by national and foreign critics as “a lyric soprano of an excellent training, with a clear and healthy tone, with a crystalline intonation, brilliant vocal technique, discreet gestures and delightful phrasing.”
