Teresa de Rogatis (1893-1979)

Rogatis gave her concert debut at age 7, to flattering reviews.¹ For the following two decades she had a flourishing performing career. Her performances could be novel: in the same recital, she might also perform on the piano, being accomplished on both instruments. But her performing career was short-lived. Like Josefina Robledo, another extraordinary female no-nail player born a year earlier, she gave up a concert career once she got married.²

As it happens, Rogatis was born the same year as Segovia (1893). I’m not sure if she ever met Segovia, but her father, Tommaso, apparently did. Rogatis’ son relates the story — it may not be wholly true, but it does give you a sense of Tommaso’s character:

[Tommaso] had gone to hear the legendary Spanish maestro in Naples in 1906.³ At the end of the concert, he went to greet him, kissed his hands, and said: “…you are a true Maestro, but my daughter plays better than you!” Then he left! Knowing my grandfather’s character, I think that’s exactly how things must have turned out.⁴

Tommaso seems to have been a difficult man. He came from a reasonably affluent family, but all that was lost in 1866 when his parents died from cholera. Almost overnight, the family was left in poverty and the children orphaned.⁵ Tommaso had musical ability and ambition, but his lack of money meant he could not pursue it. This frustrated ambition made him determined to put his daughter on a path of music.

Teresa’s son also wrote about Tommaso’s influence:

He proved to be an exacting, pitiless, surly teacher, who imposed an iron discipline on his daughter. This, which just fell short of depriving the little girl of her childhood, eventually lifted her to unusual standards: her sharp, infallible sense of hearing, her fluent, first-sight reading skills (which enabled her to transcribe any orchestral score at the piano), her astonishing proficiency in transposing on the spot any score to another key, were but some of the stunning traits which could be noticed early in her training.⁶

Unusually for a guitarist, Rogatis went to a conservatoire. She was apparently top of the class. She asked her teacher, Camillo De Nardis, if she could therefore take up conducting. But while he otherwise greatly encouraged her work, it was considered a step too far to allow a woman to conduct.⁷

When touring Egypt in 1921, she met and fell in love with a Swiss man named Paolo Feninger. They married and settled in Egypt. There, she helped found a conservatory in Cairo. Having given up professional performance, she dedicated herself to teaching guitar and piano and had a great many students. She clearly enjoyed her time there and still gave some concerts, if only in Cairo (often with her violinist sister, whom she accompanied on both guitar and piano).⁸

Following her husband’s death in 1954, and with her children having also moved away, she decided to return to Naples in 1963. Unfortunately, her time in Cairo had left her isolated from the guitar world and she went mostly unnoticed in Italy.

Still, she attracted a little school of followers. Among them was Stefano Aruta, who wrote of her:

…to this very day the prevailing feeling in each of us is that of thankfulness to the brave, devoted, outstanding teacher, who succeeded in carrying over to each of us a sense of love and caring for pupils, well beyond and independently of any matter relating to musical training; she is the one who taught us not to worship idols, but simply follow models, from which to learn, while continuing to be ourselves. She is the one who projected the image of the teacher not as that of some infallible demigod, but as that of a person in whom the pupil could trust, and who would do her utmost for his or her successful upbringing.⁹

Her compositions have some notable admirers, including Angelo Gilardino. There is an album of her guitar works, recorded by Clara Campese. However, after Rogatis moved to Cairo and began teaching, composition took a backseat, in spite of her son’s effort to get her to write pieces for him (he was a concert pianist). He once asked her why she composed so little, despite all her training and talent, and she replied:

… I didn’t want to be a musician. My father forced me. I wanted to write!¹⁰

Indeed, she never gave up this ambition to write — various of her short stories were published.

There is no explicit account of why she played without nails. There were both flesh and nail players in Italy at the time, so it would have been a perfectly normal thing for her to play without nails. It is also possible that her piano playing precluded growing nails.¹¹

The only recordings we have of Rogatis are from 1974, by which time she was 81. They are a home recordings. And yet, despite her age and the poor audio quality, the playing is remarkable — such musicality!

1. Aaron I. Cohen, International encyclopedia of women composers (Books and Music, 1987), p. 594. However, Domingo Prat gives the age as 8 in Diccionario (Editions Orphee, 1986), p. 106. ↩︎
2. In both cases there does not appear to have been any pressure from their husbands, who otherwise seem to have been supportive of their musical work. ↩︎
3. This date is almost certainly a mistake, given that Segovia’s concert debut was in 1912. ↩︎
4. https://www.claracampese.com/artist.php?view=record&rid=2431 ↩︎
5. Teresa de Rogatis, Opera scelte per chitarra, a cura di Angelo Gilardino, Stefano Aruta (Berben: 1993), p. 10. ↩︎
6. Ibid., p. 11. ↩︎
7. Ibid. ↩︎
8. https://www.claracampese.com/artist.php?view=record&rid=2431 ↩︎
9. Opera scelte, p. 14 ↩︎
10. https://www.claracampese.com/artist.php?view=record&rid=2431 ↩︎
11. This was given as the reason by Stefano Aruta, in an email, 14 June 2025. Pianists keep their nails quite short. ↩︎