OPERA SINGERS - VICTOR MAUREL  

Born in Marseille in 1848, the French baritone Victor Maurel was one of the greatest opera singers of his time, admired for his incredible technique, his musicality and his dramatic talent. His collaboration with Verdi brought him legendary status. In 1881, at Milan’s La Scala, he starred in the world premiere of the second version of Simon Boccanegra, and then in the premieres of Otello in 1887 and Falstaff in 1893. He constantly expanded his repertoire. Composers wrote new roles for him and he was part of the world premiere of Isidore de Lara’s Moina in Monte-Carlo in 1897, a very dark opera about the Irish rebellion against their oppressors in the late eighteenth century. Maurel spent his final years in New York where, in 1908, he founded an opera school and gave private lessons to leading movie actors.

• Design: Cyril DE LA PATELLIÈRE
• Line-engraving: Pierre ALBUISSON
• Printing process: 4 colours steel-engraving
• Size of the stamp: 40,85 x 52 mm vertical
• Quantity of issue: 36 000 stamps
• Sheet of 6 stamps with illuminations