Clara Petrella (28 March 1914 – 19 November 1987) was an Italian operatic soprano, particularly associated with the Italian repertory, an outstanding singing-actress nicknamed the "Duse of Singers".

Born in Greco Milanese to a musical family, she was a descendant of composer Errico Petrella, and the niece of soprano Oliva Petrella. She studied first with her sister Micaela, and later with Giannina Russ. She made her debut in Alessandria, as Liu, in 1939.

She quickly sang throughout Italy, making her debut at La Scala in 1947, as Giorgetta in Il tabarro, she sang there regularly until 1962. She was particularly admired in the verismo repertory and contemporary works. She created many roles in opera by the following composers; Lodovico Rocca, Ildebrando Pizzetti, Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, and Renzo Rossellini.

Petrella had a beautiful spinto voice, combined with an explosive dramatic temperament, and she was compared to the great Italian actress Eleonora Duse. In the early 1950s, she made several recordings with Cetra, notably; Manon Lescaut, Madama Butterfly, Il tabarro, L'amore dei tre re, Zazà, and for Decca, she recorded Pagliacci. She also appeared on Italian television productions of Manon Lescaut and Il tabarro, in 1956.

Clara died in 1987 in Milan.

• Le guide de l'opéra, les indispensables de la musique, R. Mancini & J-J. Rouvereux, (Fayard, 1986), ISBN 2-213-01563-5

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Italian. (February 2020) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Italian article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Italian Wikipedia article at [[:it:Clara Petrella]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|it|Clara Petrella}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

This article about an Italian opera singer is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

• v
• t
• e