Франческо Таманьо: Итальяндық опера тенорінің өмірі мен шығармашылығы

Italian opera singer

Francesco Tamagno (28 December 1850 – 31 August 1905) was an Italian operatic dramatic tenor who sang with enormous success throughout Europe and America. On 5 February 1887, he sang Otello in the first performance of Giuseppe Verdi's opera. He is also the earliest Italian tenor of note to have left a sizeable body of recordings of his voice. He was one of the first international male public figures to admit that he was the single parent and caregiver of a daughter from her birth.

The most famous heroic tenor of his age, Tamagno performed in 26 countries, gaining renown for the power of his singing, especially in the upper register. Tamagno was among the rare species of singers known as a tenore robusto or tenore di forza, and critics likened the sound of his voice to that of a trumpet or even a cannon. Tamagno's vocal range extended up to high C sharp during his prime, but he was no mere ”belter” of high notes; his recordings provide evidence of his ability, even at career's end, to sing softly when required, modulating the dynamic levels of his voice with skill and sensitivity. Best known as the creator of the protagonist's part in Verdi's Otello at La Scala, Milan in 1887, he also was the first Gabriele Adorno in Verdi's 1881 revision of Simon Boccanegra, a far more lyrical assignment than the "Moor of Venice". He participated in the premiere of Verdi's Italian language version of Don Carlos when it was staged at La Scala in 1884, singing the eponymous role of the Infante of Spain. Five other operas in which Tamagno created leading roles were Carlos Gomes' Maria Tudor (in 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). He was lauded for his performances of such established parts as Manrico in Il trovatore, Don Alvaro in La forza del destino, the title roles in Ernani and Poliuto, Arnold in Guillaume Tell, John of Leyden in Le prophète, Raoul in Les Huguenots, Vasco in L'Africaine, Robert in Robert le diable and Eleazar in La Juive. He excelled in the newer dramatic parts of Radames in Aida, Samson in Samson et Dalila, Alim in Le roi de Lahore and John the Baptist in Hérodiade. Yet, in his younger days, before his voice grew too robust, he was able to negotiate a role as light and graceful as that of Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor due to his accomplished mezza voce singing. Tamagno sang in approximately 55 different operas and sacred works (including Verdi's Requiem and Gioachino Rossini's Stabat Mater) during the course of his career as a soloist, which began in Turin in 1873 and continued for another 32 years, only to be curtailed by the onset of a cardiovascular affliction that killed him in middle age. With one notable exception, Tamagno largely eschewed verismo opera, considering it to be an uncomfortable fit with his stylistic training in the bel canto tradition. That notable exception was Umberto Giordano's Andrea Chénier. He studied the score of Chénier with Giordano in 1898 and earned accolades for his magisterial delivery of the tenor lead's four showpiece solos at ensuing productions of the work. He was on friendly terms, too, with Giordano's rival Giacomo Puccini. In 1892, he took part in a revival of Puccini's flawed early opera Edgar which was staged in Madrid under the supervision of the composer, but even Tamagno's involvement in the enterprise was not enough to reinvigorate Edgar and it remains rarely heard. (Tamagno also ventured a few performances of Pietro Mascagni's archetypal verismo piece, Cavalleria rusticana, in New York City in 1894.) To paraphrase Tamagno's New York Times obituary of 1 September 1905, such was the extraordinary facility of the tenor's upper register, he made the hurling forth of his high A, B and C sound as easy as everyday speech. Like all singers, however, he had his vocal shortcomings and bad habits. The vibrant, power packed tone of his voice, while thrilling, could never be described as "honeyed" or "seductive" and this reduced the effectiveness of his contribution to the more intimate passages of love duets, such as the one for the protagonist and Desdemona that crowns Act One of Otello. He was not an adroit sight reader, justifying this limitation by insisting that he was an emotional person who preferred to deliver his music from the "heart" rather than from the "head". Critics occasionally reprimanded him for striving to maximise the excitement factor of his performances by holding on to top notes longer than necessary and by sometimes pushing them sharp. He was also chided intermittently for getting behind or ahead of the conductor's beat. Tamagno pursued a busy and highly acclaimed career that lasted for more than three decades. During that time, he sang at almost every important theatre in Europe, South America and the United States. While he was not a sophisticated actor or a flawless musician, his huge voice and volcanic renditions of the most forceful tenor roles in the Italian and French repertoires had a tremendous impact on audiences, enabling him to build a worldwide reputation, and to charge promoters on both sides of the Atlantic top tier fees for his services.

Born into a large family in the northern Italian city of Turin (Torino) in 1850, Tamagno was the son of a wine seller who ran a modest trattoria. His vocal promise manifested itself early, and although encouraged by his parents to learn a trade, he was still able to take singing lessons with the conductor and composer Carlo Pedrotti at Turin's Liceo Musicale music school and gain experience as a chorister. In 1873, Tamagno completed his musical studies, and having got a stint of compulsory military service out of the way, he undertook a few small parts at Turin's Teatro Regio (Royal Theatre), of which institution Pedrotti was the director. He then made the most of an opportunity to execute a major operatic role, bursting into prominence on 20 January 1874 with a sensational performance as Riccardo in Giuseppe Verdi's Un ballo in maschera at the Teatro Bellini, Palermo. Tamagno embarked on a series of follow up 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 1877. It dispatched one of its best engineers, Fred Gaisberg, to Italy to handle the recording sessions. (Such sessions could be a daunting experience for singers of Tamagno's generation, who were accustomed to performing before an audience in an opera house environment.) The company paid Tamagno a cash advance of 2,000 pounds sterling to make his first lot of recordings. He also received royalties from the company for every individually numbered, custom labelled pressing that sold. Roland Gelatt's revised edition of The Fabulous Phonograph (Collier Books, New York, 1977, p. 119) asserts that Tamagno's recording contract, signed in December 1902, was the first to embody "the royalty principle". Gelatt states that Tamagno approved 19 recordings from his Ospedaletti session for release to the public. They went on sale in April 1903 and were heavily advertised in the press, with Tamagno billed as the world's greatest tenor. Buyers were charged one pound sterling, or its equivalent in other currencies, per disc; in comparison, Caruso's early 10 inch discs (made in Italy the previous year) sold for just 10 shillings or an equivalent amount of money. The amount charged for each of Tamagno's discs represented at least a week's wages for the common man and for that outlay, he would receive a single sided product, sometimes containing less than two minutes of music. Clearly, Tamagno's recordings were aimed at upper crust customers, as were those made by such eminent contemporaries of his as Nellie Melba, Adelina Patti, Pol Plançon and Mattia Battistini. The small group of composers featured on Tamagno's combined recorded output of 1903 and 1904 comprises Giacomo Meyerbeer, Camille Saint Saëns, Jules Massenet, de Lara, Giordano, Rossini and, naturally enough, Verdi. Apart from Otello, the operas from which he elected to record arias, in multiple takes, were Il trovatore, Guillaume Tell (Guglielmo Tell), Le prophète (Il profeta), Samson et Dalila (Sansone e Dalila), Hérodiade, Messaline and Andrea Chénier. When he stepped before the recording horn, Tamagno was in poor health and semi retirement after a long and demanding career. Consequently, his voice, although still astonishingly powerful and kept under firm technical control, was no longer at its peak, though the recording technology of the time was almost certainly not equal to the task of capturing the full breadth of Tamagno's ability at the time. Potter pays tribute to Tamagno's vocal attributes in his book about the history of tenor singing, averring that his "recorded legacy" is "a priceless connection with Verdi" while Steane, writing in The Grand Tradition (pp. 19–23), praises Tamagno's discs as "artistic and devoted performances by a singer of exceptional gifts" with a "great voice". Scott declares in The Record of Singing (pp. 131–133) that Tamagno's Otello recordings are "invaluable historically" with the Esultate in particular displaying "amazing force" and all of them exhibiting an "intensity of utterance" that is "unique". Indeed, Henry Pleasants, author of The Great Singers, goes so far as to say that the "searing despair" of Tamagno's version of Otello's death aria, Niun mi tema, "is possibly unmatched by anything else on wax" (Macmillan Publishing, revised edition, London, 1983, pp. 252–254). Symposium Records has released a two CD anthology of Tamagno's published and unpublished 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 One, 1878 1914 (CHS 7 64860 2). This edition contains four Tamagno tracks in expertly re mastered transfers plus recordings made by a number of his colleagues, including baritone Victor Maurel, the creator of the role of Iago in Otello, and bass Francesco Navarini, the creator of the role of Lodovico in the same opera. Of more specialist interest (but bringing us closer to Tamagno in recording quality) has been a 2007 release of all of Tamagno's extant 12 inch records on high quality vinyl discs (pressed from the original metal "masters"/parts found in a German archive) by the United Kingdom firm Historic Masters. This was followed in 2012 by all the ten inch recordings. All but one of Tamagno's recordings (published or not) have been found. The Historic Masters boxed set is accompanied by a biographical essay written by Michael Aspinall, who also discusses Tamagno's discography and appraises his vocal technique. The set contains, among other things, a recently discovered recording of the Oath Duet from Otello ('Si pel ciel') and an aria from Messaline that was previously known only from a private test pressing once belonging to Tamagno. The baritone on the Otello duet is anonymous, but Aspinall believes it might be Tamagno's younger brother, Giovanni, who had a minor singing career. Aspinall concludes his essay thus: "Tamagno is one of the most charismatic and communicative singers ever to record his voice for the wonderment of future generations The privilege of listening to the complete recordings of Tamagno helps us to realise his immense stature among the great names of music drama."