Francesco Tamagno - Life and Singing Career

Life and Singing Career

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/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 essayed 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.

La Scala was Italy's principal 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 spirited use in a variety of operas. He enjoyed the added advantage of working closely with Verdi, and his vocalism acquired a discipline and polish that hitherto it had lacked. According to The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera, he would eventually take part in every La Scala season until the end of 1887 and appear there again in 1901 as a guest artist. He did not completely turn his back on Turin, however, and he found time to sing periodically in his home town. (Indeed, his last known public engagement occurred in Turin in 1905.)

Argentina was an overseas bastion of Italian opera throughout this period, and Tamagno undertook the first of several well-remunerated visits to the South American nation's capital city of Buenos Aires in 1879. Earlier, in 1875-1876, he had sung in Spain. But his international career did not take off explosively until 1888, with the role of Otello—which Verdi had penned with Tamagno's voice in mind—serving as his global calling card. Music-performance historian John Potter has this to say about Otello in his 2009 book, Tenor: History of a Voice (Yale University Press, p. 61): "The title role was one of the most taxing tenor parts ever written and was created specifically for the unique talents and vocal persona of Tamagno. The requirements of the role, an imposing physical presence capable of combining lyrical sweetness with stentorian declamation that ranges from a rich baritonal middle to a ringing upper register, have made it problematic to cast ever since."

Tamagno toured sedulously during the final dozen years of the 19th century, accepting lucrative invitations to perform Otello and other strenuous operatic roles in countries as diverse as England, France, Portugal, Spain (again), Germany, Austria, Russia, Uruguay, Brazil, Mexico and, as we have noted, Argentina. He performed often, too, at the fashionable Monte Carlo Opera and appeared at key musical venues in the North American cities of New York, Chicago, Boston, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and San Francisco. Tamagno's obituary in the New York Times says that he sang in the United States for the first time in 1890. The prominent American impresario Henry Eugene Abbey managed him during this particular trans-Atlantic visit.

To give just five specific examples of Tamagno's foreign engagements in the wake of the 1887 premiere of Otello, he performed at the New York Metropolitan Opera in 1894–1895, at London's Lyceum Theatre in 1889, at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg in 1896-97, at the Paris Opera in 1897, and at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 1895 and 1901. (During his London seasons, he also sang privately for Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle.)

Orchestral conductors of the calibre of Franco Faccio, Luigi Mancinelli and Arturo Toscanini partnered Tamagno during his heyday, and he appeared opposite some of the most illustrious sopranos, baritones and basses in operatic history. Veteran opera-goers regarded Tamagno as being the legitimate successor to Enrico Tamberlik (1820–1889), the dominant Italian heroic tenor of the mid-19th century, while Jean de Reszke (1850–1925) was widely considered to be the finest of his tenorial coevals. An elegant lyric-dramatic tenor of the French school, de Reszke's repertoire overlapped Tamagno's to some extent, and although he could never out sing his Italian rival, he had a rounder voice and a suaver stage presence. He was also the foremost male exponent of Richard Wagner's operas to be heard on the stages of London and New York during the late-Victorian Era. Tamagno, however, refused to perform Wagnerian works, even in Italian translation; he believed that the tessitura of the music written for Wagner's tenor heroes lay too low to suit his vocal range.

Tamagno lived long enough to witness the rise to fame of the young Enrico Caruso (1873–1921). He admired Caruso's ability, predicting as far back as 1898 that Caruso would go on to become the number-one Italian tenor of the 20th century. As M. J. Phillips-Matz observes in her 2002 Puccini biography, Tamagno and Caruso actually appeared on the same stage in February 1901, during a concert at La Scala. The concert had been organised by Toscanini as a commemorative tribute to the recently deceased Verdi. (In it, Tamagno sang an extract from La forza del destino and Caruso led the quartet from Rigoletto.) Opera commentator Michael Scott states that Tamagno gave his last performance as Otello in Rome in 1903, when he starred in a gala production mounted for Kaiser Wilhelm II.

A single father who never married, Tamagno possessed an affable personality in addition to a shrewd business brain and a careful attitude to money. Soprano Nellie Melba's most recent biographer, Ann Blainey, recounts how Melba reacted to Tamagno's penny-pinching when she twice encountered demonstrations of it during the 1894-1895 New York Met season:

"His astounding voice was said to have 'the metallic penetration of an eight-inch shell', but at heart he remained a simple peasant, and his peasant-like parsimony was a source of amusement. One night Melba and Jean de Reszke watched open-mouthed as he pocketed the after-dinner candies and souvenired a bunch of orchids from the table. Soon after, at a lunch, Melba saw him gather up his neighbour's uneaten cutlets and wrap them in a newspaper. He said they were for his dog, but Melba guessed they were for his own dinner." (See I Am Melba, Black Inc. Books, Melbourne, Australia, 2008, p. 149.)

Tamagno was blessed with a bullish physique but a chronic cardiac ailment caused his health to deteriorate during the early 1900s. Although this ailment forced him to quit the operatic stage, he continued to give recitals and appear in concerts, the final one of which was held in Ostend, Belgium, in 1904. He sang briefly in public for the last time in March the following year and withdrew to the tranquility of a villa in Varese, Lombardy, that he had owned since 1885 and had remodelled extensively. Tamagno's medical condition failed to improve, however, and he suffered a heart attack while at the villa. He was confined to his bed, experienced a relapse and died on 31 August 1905, aged 54. His body lies interred in an elaborate stone mausoleum at Turin's General Cemetery.

Tamagno's beloved daughter Margherita, who had been born out of wedlock, and for whom he cared from her birth, inherited his considerable estate, according to biographer Ugo Piavano. Piavano's definitive biography, Otello Fu: La Vera Vita di Francesco Tamagno, il "tenore-cannone", was published in Milan in 2005 by Rugginenti Editore to mark the 100th anniversary of the singer's death. Both Volume One of Michael Scott's The Record of Singing (published by Duckworth, London, 1977) and J. B. Steane's The Grand Tradition: 70 Years of Singing on Record (Duckworth, London, 1974) contain evaluations of Tamagno's voice and artistry. Furthermore, the Teatro Regio di Torino has acquired many of Tamagno's costumes and other items relating to his operatic career, while his butterfly collection can be viewed in Varese at the Villa Mirabello.