Margaret Rizza

RIZZA, Margaret (née Lensky). b. 19 August 1929. She studied at the Royal College of Music, London, and the National School of Opera, and completed her opera training in Italy (Siena and Rome). For two decades she sang, as Margaret Lensky, at such prestigious venues as Glyndebourne, La Scala, and Sadler’s Wells, and worked with celebrated composers including Igor Stravinsky, Benjamin Britten*, and Leonard Bernstein. After marriage to George Rizza, a music publisher, and the birth of a daughter, she decided to stop travelling, and, in 1977, began teaching vocal studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London. Rizza’s career as a composer of devotional music emerged later in life...