Who was Olga Iglesias?

Known as the soprano who most performed in Pablo Casals' magnum opus, El Pessebre, as well as interpreter of his art songs, Olga Iglesias was born on March 22, 1929 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The youngest of eight children born to Rafael Iglesias Normandín and María Victoria Antoni Rodríguez, Olga Iglesias was exposed to music through her older siblings who played the piano and the violin. Showing talent in singing at an early age, at 14 she began studying with renowned Puerto Rican tenor, Antonio Paoli, while still attending Central High School in Santurce, Puerto Rico. In 1947, Olga Iglesias made her public debut on May 4 at La Fortaleza, the official residence of the governor of Puerto Rico, during the first annual "The Week of Music". During this occasion she sang Verdi's "Caro nome" from Rigoletto and "Ah, fors'è lui" from La Traviata.

In 1958 Olga Iglesias made her debut in the second season of the Puerto Rico Casals Festival in Ponce, Puerto Rico under the direction of Richard Burgin, associate conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. This was the first of multiple performances over decades in which Olga would sing as a participant of the Casals Festival. In July of 1960, Olga received a letter by renowned violinist and conductor Alexander Schneider, who at the time also held an administrative role for the Casals Festival. Schneider indicated that Pablo Casals had selected her to be the soloist in three concerts Casals was conducting in March of 1961. It was in these performances where she sang Donizetti's "Regnava nel silenzio" from Lucia di Lammermoor and W.A. Mozart's "No, no che non sei capace," K. 419. In 1963, under Pablo Casals' baton, she later went on to Carnegie Hall under the Casals Festival to sing in J.S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion and in 1964 to sing in Haydn's The Creation. These are two of three performances she sang at Carnegie Hall, in addition to many others under the baton of Pablo Casals and at the Puerto Rico Casals Festival.

In 1965, with Rudolf Serkin serving as the artistic director of the Marlboro Music Festival in Marlboro, Vermont, Olga Iglesias received correspondence confirming her participation in said festival. Pablo Casals attended that summer as well, a frequent participant. In the summer of 1966 Olga Iglesias returned to Marlboro once again, this time to record six of Casals' art songs for Columbia Records (now Sony) with Mieczyslaw Horszowski on piano and supervision by the composer, Pablo Casals. This recording is still commercially available today.