'She is a Degenerate Cocaine Addict'. Emma Carelli, A Diva-Impresario Facing Her Opponents

The entrepreneurial career of the former diva Emma Carelli (Naples, 1877 – Montefiascone, 1928) at the Teatro Costanzi of Rome represents one of the better-known examples of female impresarios’ activity in the history of music, making her – as Susan Rutherford has noted – one of ‘the handful of women that achieved access to management in the major opera houses of Britain, Europe, and North America’. A soprano of international renown, at the age of twenty-two Carelli was already performing opposite Caruso and Chaliapin at La Scala and by the turn of the century was an acclaimed diva in both Europe and South America. Starting from 1908, however, she gradually replaced the limelight with managerial activity. In the autumn of 1911 La Teatral, a company held by her husband Walter Mocchi (1870–1955), appointed her manager of the main opera house of the Italian capital city, Rome, which she ran until 1926. At the Costanzi, Carelli organised memorable seasons that included premieres of works by Mascagni and Puccini, the first continuous Italian runs of Diagilev's Ballets Russes, and several Futurist nights and exhibitions, hosted in the foyers of her theatre. The former singer had to cease her activity when the Costanzi was purchased by the Fascist Governor of Rome to create the current Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. Two years later, in 1928, Carelli died in a car accident at the wheel of her flaming red Lancia Lambda.