The soprano Regina Pacini (1871–1965), born in Lisbon, was the daughter of Pietro Pacini and sister of José Pacini, who were respectively director and impresario of the Teatro de São Carlos.1 She began attending opera performances as a child in the company of her father and studied voice with the distinguished teacher Napoleone Vellani between 1885 and 1888. She made her debut on the Lisbon operatic stage on January 5, 1888, in La sonnambula, on the eve of her seventeenth birthday, receiving excellent reviews from both audiences and critics.2
During that same season, she also stood out in Lucia di Lammermoor, Crispino e la comare, Linda di Chamounix, and I puritani, always with notable success.3 That summer, she settled in Paris to study voice with Mathilde Marchesi and lyric declamation with Iginio Manzoni, later returning to Lisbon to rejoin the casts of the Teatro de São Carlos.4
Toward the end of this second season, she made her debut in London at Her Majesty’s Theatre in La sonnambula, earning high praise from critics. This was followed by appearances in other London venues, as well as an invitation to debut in Milan at the Teatro Manzoni, this time in Lucia di Lammermoor.5
From that point onward, Regina Pacini developed a highly successful international career across Europe and the Americas, building an extensive repertoire primarily within Italian opera.6 In 1905, she recorded a series of discs for the Società Italiana di Fonotipia.7
She retired from the stage in 1907 upon her marriage to Marcelo Alvear, attaché to the Argentine legation in Lisbon (who would later be appointed Argentine ambassador in 1912). After spending the years of World War I in Paris, the couple settled in Buenos Aires in 1922, following Alvear’s election as President of Argentina. It was in that city that Regina Pacini died in September 1965, receiving the highest honors from the Argentine state.8
