Watch Leyla Gencer perform in Verdi's Aida

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Examining Leyla Gencer’s repertoire of 72 operatic roles leads one to conclude that the singer was possessed by a staggering musical curiosity. Performing for nearly four decades, she covered music spanning more than three centuries, from Monteverdi to Britten. She was an accomplished Mozartian, yet she also triumphed as heroines of Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev. But her greatest achievements were in bel canto and Verdi roles, with which she inspired an enthusiasm in legions of fans that bordered on hysteria.

Gencer’s vocalism was not flawless: her middle range could be peculiarly veiled and lacking in colour, her upper register could turn flat under pressure, her ravishing pianissimo notes were often approached from below the pitch. It was a unique nobility of expression that made her singing memorable. To hear her sculpt the phrases of an elegiac Donizetti aria was to feel transported back to the mid-19th century, so completely did she seem to connect with the composer’s intention. If her contemporary, Maria Callas (with whom she was often compared), was Bellini’s emissary on Earth, Gencer was Donizetti’s; she sang nine of his operas, most of which were unfamiliar at the time. Gencer’s Verdi roles numbered 16, emphasising operas of the composer’s early and middle period. Listen to Gencer in a Verdi cabaletta to hear the ideal rhythmic drive and vaulting flexibility that can make such numbers so exhilarating.

Gencer’s voice adapted not simply to the gamut of stylistic requirements, but also to music written for different vocal types. Like Callas, she confused many listeners by easily encompassing roles as light as Bellini’s Amina (La Sonnambula) and as heavy as Verdi’s Lady Macbeth. By nature a middleweight lyric soprano, she pushed her voice to a degree in order to perform dramatic coloratura parts to which her style, temperament, regal stage presence and patrician appearance were so eminently suited.

A Muslim by birth, Leyla Ceyrekgil was born in Istanbul to a Polish mother and a prosperous Turkish father. As early as 16 she was undertaking vocal training at the Istanbul Conservatory. More central to her development was her work in Ankara with two legends of Italian singing: the soprano Giannina Arangi-Lombardi and, after her death, the baritone Apollo Granforte. She was married to Ibrahim Gencer, a banker, in 1946.

Having made her debut at Ankara’s State Theatre in Cavalleria rusticana (1950), Gencer subsequently appeared there in Tosca and Così fan tutte. Well aware that only in Italy would she be able to fulfil her gifts, she moved there in 1953, making her debut that summer with a recital for the public service broadcaster RAI and in Cavalleria at the Arena Flegrea in Naples.

The next few years found Gencer consolidating her reputation in Italian houses. Her ascent to prominence received a significant lift with her exquisite performance as Mme Lidoine in the world premiere of Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites (1957), which introduced her to La Scala. The following year she returned in another world premiere, Pizzetti’s Assassinio nella cattedrale. Gencer was to sing no fewer than 17 roles at La Scala in 1973.

She made her debut in America as early as 1956, singing Francesca da Rimini at San Francisco Opera. Her association with SFO continued through the next two seasons (as Violetta, Lucia, Liù, Elisabetta di Valois, Manon Lescaut and Gilda). She did not return until 1967, when she sang Gioconda, her heaviest Italian role. Gencer’s other American performances were limited to Madame Butterfly (Dallas), Don Carlo (Chicago), and three strenuous roles during the 1970s, in which artistry and charisma nearly compensated for a worn voice: Verdi’s Odabella (Newark) and two Donizetti heroines, Caterina Cornaro (Carnegie Hall) and Lucrezia Borgia (Dallas).

Gencer’s international career also included the main houses of Monaco, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain and Sweden. As for Britain, she sang at Covent Garden only in 1962, appearing in Don Carlo (debut) and Don Giovanni (her sublime Donna Anna is currently available in the ROH Heritage CD series).

Another Mozart role, Countess Almaviva, brought her to Glyndebourne, where she also portrayed Donizetti’s Anna Bolena. This was a signature role, as were the same composer’s Maria Stuarda and Rossini’s Elisabetta, both of which Gencer sang at the Edinburgh Festival.

The soprano found favour with many celebrated conductors, including von Karajan, Solti and two generations of Italians, from Serafin to Muti. She was an intense and probing collaborator, as the renowned American musicologist Philip Gossett discovered when they worked together on Anna Bolena in Rome (1977). Gossett, who considers Gencer “a mighty link to the beginning of the bel canto revival”, recalls her as “formidable, master of the role, savvy commentator on its characteristics, and knowledgeable bel canto protagonist. There was nothing of the ‘diva’ about the way she worked, although she had earned that title a hundred times over. Rather than being cast as the ‘heir’ to Callas, as several notices have declared, many at the time preferred her interpretations to those of Callas.”

Gencer gave her final opera performance in 1985, singing Francesco Gnecco’s La prova d’un opera seria at Venice’s Teatro la Fenice, where she was a great favourite. Already in the mid-1970s she was scaling down her operatic activity in favour of recitals. She continued to perform in public until 1992. In later years she coached young artists, in association with the Associazione Lirica e Concertistica Italiana and as director of La Scala’s opera academy. A prestigious vocal competition named for her has been held in Istanbul four times since 1995.

Lacking any association with a commercial recording company, Gencer in her heyday was widely known as “the pirate queen”; innumerable privately recorded (“pirated”) tapes of her performances made available first on LP, now on CD — 62 roles in all — have created a remarkable legacy. Gencer’s videography includes studio-made operatic films (Werther, Don Giovanni, Il trovatore) and a live Aida from the Verona Arena.

Her husband predeceased her.

Leyla Gencer, operatic soprano, was born on October 10, 1924. She died on May 10, 2008, aged 83