| Sciutti dies at 68 Singer was a regular with Civic Opera 04/12/2001 By Olin Chism / The Dallas Morning News Soprano and stage director Graziella Sciutti, a frequent performer with the Dallas Civic Opera in the 1960s and '70s, died of cancer Monday in Geneva. She was 68.
Ms. Sciutti made her debut with the Civic Opera, now the Dallas Opera, in 1967, singing the role of Glauce in Cherubini's Medea. Magda Olivero took the title role.
Probably Ms. Sciutti's greatest success in Dallas was as Susanna in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, a role she took in 1968 and again in 1973. She also appeared with the company in Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld, Mozart's Don Giovanni, Beethoven's Fidelio and Purcell's Dido and Aeneas.
Her last appearance with the company was in 1983, when she directed Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment.
Ms. Sciutti, who was born in Turin, Italy, in 1932, made her first operatic appearance at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in France in 1951.
She went on to perform with conductor Herbert von Karajan at Milan's La Scala. She was lead soprano at a smaller theater at La Scala called La Piccola Scala for eight years from its inception in 1955.
She became a member of the Vienna State Opera in 1960 and the following year made her debut in San Francisco as Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro. This came to be one of her most celebrated roles in other cities, as well as Dallas, and may account for the fact that she named her daughter Susanna.
She began her directing career at Covent Garden in London and at the Glyndebourne Festival in England, where she directed and performed in Poulenc's La Voix Humaine in 1977.
She then went on to direct in Canada and for companies in San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Miami and overseas, as well as in Dallas.
She joined London's Royal College of Music in the mid-1980s and continued to teach there until shortly before her death.
Ms. Sciutti leaves her daughter and a grandson, Michael. Her funeral will be Tuesday at the Italian Catholic Mission in Geneva.
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