Ferruccio Tagliavini

Ferruccio Tagliavini (born August 14, 1913 in Reggio nell'Emilia , † January 28, 1995 there ) was an Italian opera singer (tenor). He was one of the most important Italian opera tenors of the 20th century. In 1938 Ferruccio Tagliavini won a national singing competition and made his debut as Rodolfo in Puccini's La Bohème at the Florence Opera House . Due to the war, he performed exclusively in Italy in the following years, where he quickly became one of the most popular opera singers , albeit always in the shadow of Beniamino Gigli , whose career on the stage was almost over, but who was well known through his music films enjoyed.

repertoire

Tagliavini stood in the tradition of the “tenore di grazia” and could easily compete with such famous Belcantists as Tito Schipa . His voice had a timbre that is known in technical jargon as "sweetness" (technical term: "dolcezza"). He used this quality skillfully, without sounding emphatically lewd , as it is perceived as annoying by vocal experts, for example, on the late recordings of Beniamino Gigli. The beauty of the sound was paired with a perfect singing technique, which allowed the singer to compensate for the lack of radiance in his voice. The delicate phrasing was his preferred stylistic device, not the trombone-like stent tone . It is entirely justified to say that he - together with the Spanish tenor Alfredo Kraus - was to be regarded as the last real Belcantist in the classical sense. It is therefore not surprising that he primarily sang the major roles in this subject: Almaviva ( Rossini : The Barber of Seville ), Vasco da Gama ( Meyerbeer : L'Africaine ), Nemorino (Donizetti: The Love Potion ), Edgardo ( Donizetti : Lucia di Lammermoor ), Elvino ( Bellini : La Sonnambula ) and Werther in Massenet 's opera of the same name. He lacked the steely sound for the roles of Verdi . He was able to shine as Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto , as Alfredo in La traviata and above all as Fenton in Falstaff , but he had to deny himself the Manrico ( troubadour ), not to mention Radames ( Aida ) or Otello. Among the tenor roles in Puccini operas, he sang Des Grieux ( Manon Lescaut ), Rodolfo ( La Bohème ), Johnson ( The Girl from the Golden West ) and Cavaradossi ( Tosca ), although he did not use heroic tones in this role , but designed it with the help of his distinctive vocal technique. Tagliavini particularly enjoyed interpreting the tenor roles in late Verist operas such as L'Arlesiana by Francesco Cilea (1866–1950) and L'amico Fritz ( Pietro Mascagni ), with whom the singer was friends and under whose baton he appeared several times at Italian opera houses. Faust in Arrigo Boito's masterpiece Mefistofele was also one of his brilliant roles, which he recorded on record in 1957. Added to this was the popular repertoire of songs by Luigi Denza ("Funiculì, funiculà"), Paolo Tosti ("Mattinata, A Marechiare") and the classics of Neapolitan folk music .

Career

Tagliavini's career overlapped with that of other tenors who were more well-known - Beniamino Gigli and Giacomo Lauri-Volpi , on the one hand , whose stage presence was drawing to a close, but who were both extremely popular in Italy and still performed as theirs Voices had long since lost their shine and elegance. In addition, the larmoyant style of singing cultivated by Gigli enjoyed great popularity with the audience, while Tagliavini deliberately avoided this kind of ingratiation and relied on purely vocal - that is, vocal - creative means when expressing emotions. On the other hand, a strongly declamatory style of singing developed in Italy during the phase of fascism , in which loudness, exaggerated emotionality and expressiveness often dominated, while the subtle art of singing fell by the wayside. Singers like Mario del Monaco corresponded to this ideal and were also internationally regarded as representatives of a “typically Italian” art of singing. The popularity of the younger del Monaco and Franco Corelli contributed to the fact that Tagliavini was denied a comparable international career.

But also the Second World War had meant that the singer could only appear on the big stages outside Italy from 1947. Apparently he was the first tenor from defeated fascist Italy to be signed to the Metropolitan Opera in New York after the war . The high point of his American career was the production of Donizetti's love potion in 1949 under the direction of Giuseppe Antonicelli with the soprano Bidu Sayão and the baritone Giuseppe Valdengo at Tagliavini's side. But his appearances in New York remained the exception, as the Swedish tenor Jussi Björling, who was almost the same age, overtook him at the Metropolitan Opera . In 1950 Tagliavini made his debut at the Covent Garden Opera in London and also performed at the Grande Opéra de Paris , but his artistic home remained Italy.

Tagliavini remained largely unknown in Germany. Until the 1970s, complete recordings in which he was involved were available on the German record market - only RAI radio recordings that were distributed via the CETRA label and which lagged far behind the rival recordings of German and Anglo-American production companies. In addition, there was the almost overwhelming presence of Mario del Monaco, Giuseppe Di Stefano and Franco Corelli on the record market, although none of them had the same vocal technique and an equal artistic taste.

Like his rival Beniamino Gigli, Tagliavini also appeared in films - mostly music films. In 1947 he stood in front of the camera with the baritone Tito Gobbi in Gioachino Rossini's The Barber of Seville . In the 1942 film adaptation of the drama Tosca , on which the opera of the same name by Puccini is based, he was heard but not seen with the two famous arias by Mario Cavaradossi.

In 1941 he married his long-time stage partner, the soprano Pia Tassinari.

He took his stage farewell in 1970, but vocal weaknesses had already become unmistakable in the late 1950s.

Afterlife

Every year in April, an international singing competition named after Ferruccio Tagliavini is held in Deutschlandsberg in Styria . The event, at which famous opera singers are also awarded the “Golden Note of Belcanto” for their life's work, is under the joint aegis of the Graz Opera and the Opera House of Parma and Reggio nell'Emilia. In 2003 the Australian soprano Dame Joan Sutherland , who was the first to receive the "Golden Note" in 1995, chaired the jury. Other winners of the "Golden Note" were Giuseppe Taddei (1996), Marcel Prawy (1997) and Piero Cappuccilli (2001).

Filmography

• 1942: Voglio vivere so
• 1942: La donna è mobile
• 1943: Ho tanta voglia di cantare
• 1947: Il barbiere di Siviglia
• 1951: Only you are my dream (Al diavolo la celebrità)
• 1951: Anema e core
• 1958: I cannot live without you (Vento di primavera)

literature

The low level of awareness of Tagliavini outside of Italy has contributed to the fact that life data can only be determined with difficulty and indirectly. The two standard works by the music critic Jürgen Kesting ( The Great Singers and The Great Singers of the 20th Century ) were particularly helpful - not least as background information for the history of the art of singing in Italy between 1920 and 1970 .

Web links

• Ferruccio Tagliavini in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Official website of the "Ferruccio Tagliavini Competition"