Aida renata tebaldi mario del monaco biography

Italian opera singer

Mario Del Monaco (27 July 1915 – 16 October 1982) was an Italian operatic tenor.

Biography

Del Monaco was born in Florence, into a musical upper-class family, to a Neapolitan father and to a mother of Sicilian descent. As a young boy he studied the violin but had a passion for singing. He graduated from the Rossini Conservatory at Pesaro, where he first met and sang with Renata Tebaldi, with whom he would form something of an operatic dream team of the 1950s. His early mentors as a singer included Arturo Melocchi, his teacher at Pesaro, and Cherubino Raffaelli, who recognized his talent and helped launch his career.

That career began in earnest with Del Monaco's debut on 31 December 1940 as Pinkerton at the Puccini Theater in Milan. (His initial appearance in an opera had occurred the previous year, however, in Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana in Pesaro.) He sang in Italy during the Second World War and married, in 1941, Rina Filipini. In 1946, he appeared at London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, for the first time. During the ensuing years he became famous not only in London but also across the operatic world for his powerful voice and heroic acting style. It was almost heldentenor-like in scope but Del Monaco was no Wagnerian, confining his activities overwhelmingly to the Italian repertoire. He sang Wagner in concerts, from Lohengrin and Die Walküre.

Del Monaco sang at the New York Metropolitan Opera from 1951 to 1959, enjoying particular success in dramatic Verdi parts such as Radamès. He soon established himself as one of four Italian tenor superstars who reached the peak of their fame in the 1950s and '60s, the others be

She was born in Pesaro on the 1st of February, 1922, and studied piano at the Conservatory of Parma and afterwards lyric with Maestro Campgalliani.  At the  “Gioacchino Rossini” high school at Pesaro she studied singing with the famous soprano Carmen Melis.
She made her debut as Elena in Mefistofele by Arrigo Boito in Rovigo in 1944   She took part in the re-opening concert of the Scala of Milan, directed by Arturo Toscanini, singing the Prayer from Moses in Egypt by Rossini and in the “Te Deum” by Giuseppe Verdi.  On this very occasion Arturo Toscanini defined her voice as the “voice of an angel”.
Renata Tebaldi possessed a prodigiously beautiful, velvety instrument,  that of an authentic,  lyrical soprano,  governed by a technique which permitted her to pass homogeneously from register to register, to have an exemplary legato and spectacular emission (“messe di voce”) able to go from incredibly high pianissimo notes to rivers of sound.  An extremely gifted performer  with a  prestigious stage presence,  a lyrical temperament and a tendency towards sentimental abandonment rather than tragic expression, she was able to interpret her roles perfectly thanks to her inspired nobility of  phrasing and her high level of  musical and stylistic sensibility.

In the traditional repertoire of Verdi's  later operas (Aida, Othello, Falstaf), in Puccini which she found  particularly congenial  (La Boheme and Tosca, Manon Lescaut), in Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur, in  Giordano's ,Andrea Chénier  and Fedora, Renata Tebaldi  was able to show, with  perfect expressive intuition, a prodigious richness of vocal color and a superb lyrical style.  Her style was alien to the  blatant extroversion of the “veristi” sopranos,  her art was characterized by a taste of classical purity ( all you have to do is listen to her memorable “Vissi d’arte” from Tosca).

During the first part of her career she faced not only works of Wagner in Italian (her Elsa from Lohengrin and her Elizabeth from Tha

RENATA TEBALDI - Aida The beginning of the LP era heralded a plethora of studio-based recordings of complete operas. Major companies hastened to secure exclusive contacts with leading artists. There were complaints from record collectors about the implications of exclusivity. Renata Tebaldi was frequently partnered by Mario del Monaco but almost never by Giuseppe di Stefano. Much later we began to realize that the commercial records also actually contained some `dream casting' not often encountered in the opera house. The three leading principals in this complete recording of Aida were widely regarded in the Italian world of opera as the leading exponents of their roles - Tebaldi as Aida; del Monaco as Radames; Ebe Stignani as Amneris. Information is never quite complete, but I have been unable so far to trace a single occasion when the three sang together in a `live' Aida or for that matter anything else. This is the third in a series of complete operas being reissued by Pearl, featuring Renata Tebaldi. Much can be read about her career in the booklets which accompany the recordings of La Boheme (GEMS 0165) and Madama Butterfly (GEMS 0172) and this is a good reason for giving rather more space on this occasion to her leading co-prindpals. However, it is worth making the point that in the first part of her careercertainly throughout the 1950s - Tebaldi was a major interpreter of Verdi as well as Puccini. She appeared in Otello, La Traviata, Falstaff Aida, Giovanna dArco, La Forza del Destino, Simon Boccanegra as well as the Requiem. In addition to some of the above, she also participated in complete recordings of Ernani, Il Trovatore and Don Carlos. Much has been made of the rivalry between Tebaldi and Callas. The latter actually sang ten different Verdi roles on stage as against Tebaldi's eight-although the total number of performances by Callas was considerably fewer. Six of the Callas Verd