Francesco Tamagno

Francesco Tamagno (b. 28 December 1850, Turin –- d. 31 August 1905, Varese) was an Italian opera singer who performed to enormous acclaim throughout Europe and America.

The most famous heroic tenor of his age, Tamagno was renowned for the extreme power of his singing, especially in the upper register. Indeed, music critics often likened the sound of his voice to that of a trumpet or even a cannon. (This rare type of singer is called a "tenore robusto" or "tenore di forza" by Italians.)

Tamagno's vocal range extended effortlessly up to the high C-sharp during his prime. He was no mere 'belter' of high notes, however; his recordings provide evidence of his ability, even at career's end, to modulate the dynamic levels of his clarion instrument with remarkable skill and unexpected sensitivity.

Best known as the creator of the protagonist's role in Giuseppe Verdi's Otello at La Scala in 1887, he also was the first Gabriele Adorno in the 1881 version of Simon Boccanegra, a far more lyrical Verdi part. He participated, too, in the premiere performance of Verdi's revised version of Don Carlo when it was staged at La Scala in 1884, singing the part of the eponymous Infante. Five other operas (now largely forgotten) in which Tamagno created lead roles were Carlos Gomes' Maria Tudor (1879), Amilcare Ponchielli's Il figliuol prodigo (1880) and Marion Delorme (1885), Ruggero Leoncavallo's I Medici (1893) and Isidore de Lara's Messaline (1899).

Tamagno was also lauded for his potent performances as Radames in Aida, Manrico in Il trovatore, Don Alvaro in La forza del destino, the title role in Ernani, the title role in Poliuto, Samson in Samson et Dalila, Arnold in Guillaume Tell, John of Leyden in Le prophete, Raoul in Les Huguenots, Vasco in L'Africaine and John the Baptist in Herodiade. It is estimated that he appeared in a total of about 55 different operas and sacred works (including Verdi's Requiem and Gioachino Rossini's Stabat Mater) during his lifetime. Interestingly enough, with one notable exception he almost completely eschewed verismo opera. That notable exception was Umberto Giordano's Andrea Chenier, composed in 1896. He studied the score of this work with Giordano and was praised for his authoritative singing of Chenier's impassioned music. He was friendly, too, with Giordano's rival Giacomo Puccini. In 1892, he agreed to participate in an important revival of Puccini's early opera Edgar in Madrid that was supervised by the composer; but even Tamagno's involvement in the production was not enough to save Edgar and it remains rarely heard.

In summary: Tamagno performed at all the major opera establishments of Europe, the United States and South America in a stellar career stretching from the early 1870s to the early 1900s. While not an accomplished actor or a flawless musician (his rhythm and pitching could be wayward on occasion), his huge voice and volcanic renditions of the most forceful tenor roles in the Italian and French operatic repertory had a tremendous impact on audiences, enabling him to build a world-wide reputation as an elite singer and charge impresarios on both sides of the Atlantic top-tier fees for his services.

Birth, operatic career & death

Born in the Northern Italian city of Turin (Torino) in 1850, Francesco Tamagno was the son of a trattoria owner and wine-seller. His vocal promise manifested itself early, and although steered into learning a trade by his parents, he was able to take singing lessons with Carlo Pedrotti at the local Liceo Musicale and find work as a chorister.

Having completed a stint of compulsory military service, Tamagno sang several small operatic parts at Turin's Teatro Regio (Royal Theatre) in 1872-73 before graduating to principal tenor roles. He burst into prominence in January 1874 with a sensational performance as Riccardo in Giuseppe Verdi's Un ballo in maschera at Palermo. Tamagno then undertook a string of singing engagements in Ferrara, Rovigo, Venice and Barcelona which raised his profile further and enabled him to make his debut at Milan's La Scala in December 1877. La Scala had long been Italy's leading opera theatre and Tamagno became a core member of its company of singers. His voice continued to mature at La Scala, reaching its full potential after a few years of vigorous use in a variety of operas. He enjoyed the added advantage of working closely with Verdi, and his singing acquired a discipline and polish that hitherto it had lacked. Eventually, he would perform in every La Scala season from 1877 to 1887 and appear there again as a guest artist in 1901.

Argentina was an overseas bastion of Italian opera throughout this period, and Tamagno made the first of several well-remunerated visits to its capital city of Buenos Aires in 1879. But his international career would not take off in a big way until 1887-1888, with the role of Otello -- which Verdi had written with Tamagno's extraordinary voice in mind -- serving as his global calling card.

Tamagno travelled widely during the final dozen years of the 19th century, accepting lucrative invitations to perform Otello and other strenuous operatic parts in France, Portugal, Spain (where he had first sung in 1875-1876), Germany, Austria, Russia, Uruguay, Brazil, Mexico and, as we have noted, Argentina. He appeared, too, at the Monte Carlo Opera and at the most important operatic venues in New York City, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco and London. (To give three specific examples: he sang at the New York Metropolitan Opera in 1891 and 1894-1895, at London's Lyceum Theatre in 1889, and at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 1895 and 1901.)

Orchestral conductors of the calibre of Franco Faccio, Luigi Mancinelli and Arturo Toscanini partnered Tamagno during the course of his singing career, and he appeared opposite some of the most illustrious sopranos, baritones and basses in operatic history. He set a benchmark standard in vocalism which still remains relevant and most expert commentators would regard him as being the greatest heroic-voiced Mediterranean tenor whose voice is preserved on records.

Tamagno was seen in his day as the true successor to Enrico Tamberlik (1820-1889), the dominant Italian dramatic tenor of the mid-19th century, while Polish-born Jean de Reszke was considered to be Tamagno's foremost contemporary rival. De Reszke (1850-1925) was an elegant lyric-dramatic tenor of the French school whose repertoire overlapped Tamagno's to some extent. Although he could never outsing Tamagno, de Reszke was the more sophisticated musician, with a sweeter voice as well as a suave stage presence. He was also the finest male exponent of Richard Wagner's operas to be heard on the stages of London and New York during the late-Victorian era. (Tamagno never attempted to perform Wagnerian works, even in Italian translation; he believed that the music written for Wagner's tenor heroes lay too low to suit his voice.) Fortunately, Tamagno lived long enough to witness the rise to stardom of the young Enrico Caruso (1873-1921). He greatly admired Caruso's talent, predicting as far back as 1898 that Caruso would go on to become the number one Italian tenor of the 20th century. In 1901, he and Caruso both sang in a memorial concert at La Scala that was organised by Toscanini as a tribute to the recently deceased Verdi.

In private life Tamagno was an affable if parsimonious bachelor who never forgot his humble origins, no matter how wealthy he became. (Soprano Nellie Melba recounts in her memoirs that Tamagno would save money by keeping the left-overs of his restaurant and hotel meals, consuming them later.) For relaxation, he liked to study butterflies. His health deteriorated during the early 1900s, however, due to a debilitating cardiac condition. He was forced to retire from the the operatic stage as a result of his illness but he continued to give concerts, the final one of these being held in Ostend, Belgium, in 1904. Tamagno sang briefly in public for the last time the following year and died at his ornate villa in Varese, Italy, on 31 August 1905. His chronic heart ailment had combined with the effects of a stroke to bring about his demise at the age of 54. He was buried at Turin's general cemetery inside a stone mausoleum of impressive proportions. An illegitimate daughter, Margherita, whom he loved deeply, acknowledged openly and cared for from birth, inherited his large fortune.

A definitive biography, Otello Fu: La Vera Vita di Francesco Tamagno, il "tenore-cannone", by Ugo Piavano, was published in Milan in 2005 to mark the 100th anniversary of the singer's death. The Teatro Regio di Torino has acquired many of Tamagno's costumes and other items relating to his operatic career. His butterfly collection can be viewed in Varese at the Villa Mirabello.

Recordings

	Niun mi tema Francesco Tamagno, the original Otello, sings "Niun mi tema" (Morte d'Otello) from Giuseppe Verdi's Otello. This 1903 recording dates from just two years before Tamagno's death.
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Tamagno's intensely bright, ringing voice with its penetrating timbre, open production and incisive declamation can be heard on a series of primitive, piano-accompanied recordings of operatic arias which he made in Italy in 1903 and 1904 (at Ospedaletti and in Rome respectively). The Gramophone & Typewriter Company paid him a handsome amount of money to make the recordings and he received a royalty payment from the company for each individually numbered disc that sold. Buyers were charged one pound sterling, or its equivalent, per 10- or 12-inch disc; in comparison, Caruso's 10-inch recordings sold for just 10 shillings. The £1 each charged for Tamagno's recordings represented at least a week's wages for the common man, and for that you got a single-sided disc, sometimes containing less than two minutes of music. (Tamagno's recordings, like those cut by such famous contemporaries of his as Melba, Adelina Patti and Mattia Battistini, were clearly aimed at upper-class customers.) Among the composers featured on Tamagno's recorded output were Meyerbeer, Saint-Saens, Massenet, de Lara, Giordano, Rossini and, naturally enough, Verdi.

When he stepped before the acoustic recording horn, Tamagno was in poor health and in semi-retirement after a demanding career that had lasted for more than 30 years. Consequently his voice, although still astonishingly powerful and kept under firm technical control, was no longer at its peak. (His phrasing had lost some of its former expansiveness, for instance, and he had developed a preference for stately tempi.) Despite this, his singing remains uniquely impressive and the extracts from Otello which he committed to disc are treated by scholars as audio documents of immense historical and musical importance.

Symposium Records has released a two-CD set containing an almost complete anthology of Tamagno's recordings (catalogue number 1186/87), while an extensive selection of them was issued on the Pearl/Opal label (CD 9846) in 1990. Those wanting to hear Tamagno in a broader context may wish to consult EMI's three-CD La Scala Edition, Volume 1, 1878-1914 (CHS 7 64860 2). This edition contains four Tamagno tracks in excellent re-mastered transfers, plus recordings made by a number of his operatic colleagues and rivals. Of more specialist interest is a 21st-century release of all of Tamagno's extant 12-inch discs on high quality, 78-rpm vinyl pressings by the British firm Historic Masters. This particular set includes a recently discovered recording of the tenor-baritone duet from Otello, 'Si pel ciel', as well as an aria from Messaline that was previously known only from a private test pressing once belonging to Tamagno.

External links

• International Jose Guillermo Carrillo Foundation
• Biography from Stanford University
• Francesco Tamagno includes his 1903 recording of the death of Otello
• Historic Masters (clean) version of the 1903 recording of the death of Otello
• History of the Tenor - Sound Clips and Narration