Laure Cinti-Damoreau

Laure Cinti-Damoreau, born Montalant, was a French soprano born in Paris on 6 February 1801 and died in the same city on 25 February 1863. Her career unfolded chiefly on Parisian stages and at the major opera houses of Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century. Her stage name, Cinti, was coined by Angelica Catalani, who Italianised her second name.

She studied piano at the Paris Conservatoire and singing with Plantade. She made her debut at the Théâtre Italien in Una cosa rara on 8 January 1816. After Catalani's management collapsed in 1818, she was re-engaged the following year, when a new company was formed at the Théâtre Louvois, where she sang roles such as Cherubino and Rosina. In 1822 she spent a season at the King's Theatre in London, and in 1825 she joined the Paris Opéra, where she remained until 1835, with a break in the summer of 1827 when she went to sing in Brussels and married the tenor V.C. Damoreau. Her command of coloratura, acquired by imitating her colleagues at the Théâtre Italien, was decisive in securing her engagement.

At the Opéra she created the principal soprano roles in Rossini's Le siège de Corinthe, Moïse, Le comte Ory and Guillaume Tell, as well as in Auber's La muette de Portici and Isabelle in Meyerbeer's Robert le diable. Although she was the best-paid singer at the theatre, she accepted a more attractive offer from the Opéra-Comique, where between 1836 and 1841 she performed a series of new operas by Auber. In 1844 she travelled to the United States with the violinist Artôt and continued to sing in concerts until 1848. She taught singing at the Paris Conservatoire from 1833 to 1856 and published a Method of singing in 1849, along with other manuals and a number of songs.

Her legacy is associated above all with the purity of her tone and her intonation, qualities that led her to be compared to a perfect piano, and with elegant, varied ornamentation. She was more a Rossinian than a Meyerbeerian singer, as she lacked the emotional and dramatic intensity of Falcon, but she managed to redirect her career when Falcon threatened to eclipse her at the Opéra.