Tito Schipa – operatic tenor

Star on two continents whose voice divided opinions

The tenor Tito Schipa enjoyed success
on two continents

Tito Schipa, one of the most popular opera singers in the first half of the 20^th century who sang to packed houses in the United States and South America as well as in Italy, was born on this day in 1888 in Lecce.

The tenor, whose repertoire included Verdi and Puccini roles in the early part of his career and later encompassed works by Donizetti, Cilea and Massanet, rose from modest beginnings to find fame with the Chicago and New York Metropolitan opera companies in America.

He also appeared regularly in Buenos Aires in Argentina and later in his career starred regularly at Teatro alla Scala in Milan and the Rome Opera.

Some critics said his voice lacked power and had too narrow a range for him to be considered a genuinely great tenor, yet he overcome his perceived limitations to become extremely popular with the public wherever he performed.

Schipa was born Raffaele Attilio Amedeo Schipa in the Le Scalze district of Lecce, a fairly working class neighbourhood in the Puglian city.  His family were of Albanian heritage. His father was a customs officer.

His talent was first noted by a primary school teacher in Lecce and soon afterwards by a Catholic bishop, Gennaro Trama, a music enthusiast who had a reputation as something of a talent scout, and who encouraged him to join his local seminary.

Schipa often performed opposite the
soprano Amelita Galli-Curci

Eventually, feeling his opportunities in Lecce were limited, Schipa made the bold decision to move to Milan to work with Emilio Piccoli, an opera singer who had become a distinguished voice teacher.

With Piccoli’s help he was able to make his stage debut in Vercelli in Piedmont as Alfredo in a performance of Verdi’s La Traviata in 1909 at the age of 21.

He was by no means an overnight success, spending the next few seasons appearing at small opera houses around Italy. But in 1913 he had the opportunity to travel to South America. He had already displayed his linguistic versatility by singing in Spanish for audiences in Madrid and he was a hit with operagoers in both Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro.

On his return to Italy, a brilliant performance in Puccini’s Tosca on his debut at Teatro San Carlo in Naples in 1914 earned rave reviews and suddenly Schipa was regarded as a major talent.

He developed a professional relationship with the soprano Amelita Galli-Curci, whose voice blended perfectly with his. It was alongside Galli-Curci that he made his US debut in Chicago in 1919, having been invited by the Scottish soprano Mary Garden and the impresario Cleofonte Campanini, who were managers of the Civic Opera.

His debut in Verdi’s Rigoletto began a 20-year association with the Chicago Opera Company, although from 1932, as the financial recession hit Chicago in particular, he was dividing his loyalties between the Illinois city and the New York Metropolitan Opera.

Schipa waves farewell from the steps of
an American ship en route to New York

Schipa’s career was boosted by the growing popularity of the gramophone. He made numerous audio recordings of arias and songs during his career from 1913 onwards. His 78-rpm set of Donizetti's Don Pasquale, made in 1932, is considered so good that it remains in circulation on CD.

Away from the theatre, Schipa led a colourful social life, although his associations with characters in the circle of the Mafia boss Al Capone often resulted in him losing money through dubious ‘investments’ presented to him.

He was married for the first time in 1920 to the French actress Antoinette Michel d'Ogoy, with whom he had two daughters, Elena and Liana.  During the Second World War he had a long affair with the Italian actress Caterina Boratto, although it was to another Italian starlet, Teresa Borgna, that he was married after Antoinette’s death in 1947. The marriage produced a son, Tito junior.

Schipa was a conductor as well as a singer and towards the end of his career, after he had retired from the operatic stage, was the director of a singing school in Budapest.  He had another singing school in New York, and was living in Manhattan at the time of his death, in 1965, at the age of 78, from diabetes.

Piazza Duomo in the Baroque city of Lecce

Travel tip:

Lecce, Schipa’s birthplace, has such a rich cultural heritage it is sometimes called the Florence of the South. It is the main city on Puglia's Salento peninsula. It became a centre for the ornate architecture called Barocco Leccese. Its historic centre, compact and easy to explore, is filled with Baroque monuments. There are many restaurants, too, that offer fine food typical of Puglia.

The Piazza Cavour is at the heart of historic Vercelli

Travel tip:

Vercelli, where Schipa made his operatic debut, is a city of around 46,500 people situated about 80km (50 miles) northeast of Turin near the Sesia river.  It is one of the oldest urban settlements in northern Italy, founded in around 600BC and has numerous Roman relics and several noteworthy towers, including the Torre dell’Angelo that overlooks the market square, Piazza Cavour.  The Basilica di Sant’Andrea is one of the best preserved Romanesque monuments in Italy.

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Luigi Lablache – opera star

19^th century giant was Queen Victoria’s singing coach

Luigi Lablache appeared in his first
major role at the age of 18

The singer Luigi Lablache, whose powerful but agile bass-baritone voice and wide-ranging acting skills made him a superstar of 19^th century opera, was born in Naples on this day in 1794.

Lablache was considered one of the greatest singers of his generation; for his interpretation of characters such as Leporello in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Geronimo in Domenico Cimarosa’s Il matrimonio segreto, Gottardo the Podestà in Gioachino Rossini’s La gazza ladra, Henry VIII in Gaetano Donizetti’s Anna Bolena and Oroveso in Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma he had few peers.

Donizetti created the role of Don Pasquale in his comic opera of the same name specifically for Lablache.

Lablache performed in all of Italy’s major opera houses and was a star too in Vienna, London, St Petersburg and Paris, which he adopted as his home in later life, having acquired a beautiful country house at Maisons-Laffitte, just outside the French capital. 

Lablache was a man of not
inconsiderable girth

He was approached to give singing lessons to the future Queen Victoria a year before she inherited the English throne, in 1836.  He found the future queen to have a clear soprano voice and a keen interest in music and opera and they developed a close bond, establishing an arrangement that would continue every summer for 20 years, coming to an end only when Lablache’s health began to decline.

Lablache’s father was a French merchant, Nicolas Lablache, who had fled Marseille during the Revolution.  His mother was an Irish woman.  They were well connected, and when his father died Luigi and his mother were helped by Joseph Bonaparte, a French diplomat whose elder brother, Napoleon, would eventually make King of Naples.

Luigi was sent to the Conservatorio della Pietà de’ Turchini in Naples, where he was taught singing and became proficient at playing the violin and cello.  His burning ambition at the time was to act and several times he ran away from the conservatory, hoping to join a theatre troupe, but each time was brought back, not least because he had revealed himself to have a wonderful voice, at that time a contralto.

Before it broke, he sang the solos in Mozart’s Requiem at the funeral of Joseph Haydn.  Later in life, he would sing at the funerals of Beethoven, Chopin and Bellini.

Once it had broken, his voice developed rapidly. In 1812, at just 18 years of age, he was engaged at the Teatro di San Carlo, Naples, and appeared in Valentino Fioravanti's La Molinara.

Lablache in Donizetti's Don Pasquale

He sang in Palermo from 1812 to 1817, when he moved to Teatro alla Scala in Milan to take the part of Dandini in Rossini's La Cenerentola.

His reputation spread throughout Europe.  From Milan he went to Turin, back to Milan in 1822 and then to Vienna via Venice. Returning to Naples after 20 years away, he gave a sensational performance as Assur in Rossini's Semiramide. In March 1830 he was first heard in London as Geronimo in Cimarosa's Il matrimonio segreto and from that year forward he would visit London annually.

Despite his physical size and the natural power of his voice, Lablache had the dexterity to produce comic, humorous, tender or sorrowful effects when requred and was versatile enough as an actor to be equally convincing in comic and dramatic parts.

While his size was arguably an asset to his vocal power, he was naturally of a lazy disposition and it is said he would have been content had he been nothing more than a provincial singer.

He was cajoled and encouraged to realise his potential largely by his wife, the singer Teresa Pinotti, whom he married when he was just 18 and who bore him 13 children.  Several of his children became singers themselves.  His descendants include the English-born Hollywood actor, Stewart Granger, who was his great-great-grandson.

His health began to deteriorate in around 1857 and he returned to Naples, taking a house in Posillipo in the hope that the warm southern Italian climate might reduce his tendency to develop chest infections.  The relief was only temporary, however, and he died in Naples in 1858 at the age of 64.

His body was returned to France and he was buried at Maisons-Laffitte in accordance with his wishes.

Villa Donn'Anna was built right on the sea's edge

Travel tip:

Posillipo is a residential quarter of Naples that has been associated with wealth in the city since Roman times. Built on a hillside that descends gradually towards the sea, it offers panoramic views across the Bay of Naples towards Vesuvius and has been a popular place to build summer villas. Some houses were built right on the sea’s edge, such as the historic Villa Donn’Anna, which can be found at the start of the Posillipo coast near the harbour at Mergellina.

Teatro San Carlo has been open for business since 1737

Travel tip:

The Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, where Lablache made his debut at the age of 18, is the oldest continually active venue for public opera performances in the world, having opened in 1737, more than 40 years ahead of both La Scala in Milan and La Fenice in Venice.  It was also, when it opened, the largest opera venue in the world, with the capacity to accommodate 3,000 spectators, a large number of whom would be standing but of whom 1,379 would have seats, including those occupying the 184 boxes, arranged in a six-tier horseshoe around the stage.

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Giuditta Pasta – soprano

The first singer to perform the roles of Anna Bolena and Norma

Giuditta Pasta was a mezzo-soprano much in
demand among 19th century composers

Singer Giuditta Pasta, whose voice was so beautiful Gaetano Donizetti wrote the role of Anna Bolena especially for her, was born on this day in 1797 in Saronno in Lombardy.

Her mezzo-soprano voice was much written about by 19th century opera reviewers and in modern times her performance style has been compared with that of Maria Callas.

Indeed, Vincenzo Bellini’s opera Norma, which Callas would turn into her signature role, was actually written for Pasta in 1831.

Pasta was born Giuditta Negri, the daughter of a Jewish soldier. She studied singing in Milan and made her operatic debut there in 1816.

Later that year she performed at the Theatre Italien in Paris as Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, but it was not until 1821 that her talent was fully recognised when she appeared in Paris as Desdemona in Gioachino Rossini’s Otello.

Giuditta married another singer, Giuseppe Pasta, in 1816 and as well as being her regular leading man he handled her business affairs and identified likely roles and composers who might wish to work with her.

An illustration of Giuditta Pasta in the
premiere of La Sonnambula

She sang regularly in Milan, Naples, Paris and London and her unique voice attracted a lot of attention.

The French writer Stendhal wrote about her: ‘She can achieve perfect resonance on a note as low as bottom A and can rise as high as C sharp or even to a slightly sharpened D, and she possesses the rare ability to be able to sing contralto as easily as she can sing soprano.’

He argued for a score to be composed expressly for Pasta. Donizetti responded with the role of Anna Bolena in the opera of the same name and Pasta performed it at Milan’s Teatro Carcano in 1830, giving the composer the greatest success of his career to that point.

Bellini wrote for her the part of Amina in La Sonnambula and the protagonist’s part in Norma and these were also major successes for Pasta in 1831. She retired from the stage in 1835 when her voice began to deteriorate.

After her husband’s death, she taught singing and among her pupils were contralto Emma Albertazzi, soprano Marianna Barbieri-Nini, and the English soprano Adelaide Kemble. Another pupil, Carolina Fermi, who also became a noted Norma, taught the soprano Eugenia Burzio, whose recordings are known for their passionate expression.

Pasta died in Blevio in the province of Como at the age of 67.

The Sanctuario della Madonna dei Miracoli in Saronno

Travel tip:

Saronno, where Giuditta Pasta was born, is a large town in Lombardy in the province of Varese. It is well known for the production of amaretti di Saronno, small almond-flavoured biscuits, and the liqueur, amaretto. One of the town’s most beautiful buildings is the Santuario della Madonna dei Miracoli, built in 1498, which has a stunning fresco, The Concert of Angels, by Gaudenzio Ferrari.

The Teatro Carcano is in Corso di Porta Romana on the
south-east side of Milan city centre

Travel tip:

The Teatro Carcano in Milan, where Giuditta sang the role of Anna Bolena for the first time in 1830, is still a working theatre and can be found in Corso di Porta Romana. Although it now presents mainly plays and ballets, it was an opera house for most of the 19th century. It was built in 1803 on the site of a former convent for Milanese aristocrat and theatre-lover Giuseppe Carcano. The world premiere of Anna Bolena took place at the theatre on December 26, 1830 and the world premiere of La Sonnambula on March 6, 1831.

Also on this day: Trieste becomes part of Italy

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Ezio Pinza - opera and Broadway star

Poor boy from Rome who made his home at the Met

Ezio Pinza

The opera star Ezio Pinza, who had 22 seasons at the Metropolitan Opera in New York from 1926 to 1948 and sang to great acclaim at many other of the world’s most famous opera houses, was born on this day in 1892 in Rome.

Pinza, a bass who was blessed with a smooth and rich voice and matinee idol looks, also had a successful career in musical theatre on Broadway and appeared in a number of Hollywood films.

Born Fortunio Pinza in relative poverty in Rome, he was the seventh child born to his parents Cesare and Clelia but the first to survive.  He was brought up many miles away in Ravenna, which is close to the Adriatic coast, about 85km (53 miles) from Bologna and 144km (90 miles) from Venice.

He dropped out of Ravenna University but studied singing at Bologna’s Conservatorio Martini and made his opera debut at Cremona in 1914 in Bellini’s Norma.

Pinza signed up to fight for his country in the First World War, after which he resumed his career in 1919. Within a short time he was invited to perform at Italy’s most prestigious opera house, Teatro alla Scala in Milan, where he came under the baton of the brilliant but demanding conductor, Arturo Toscanini.

Toscanini recognised his talent and under his guidance, Pinza began to prosper. For a bass his voice had unusual beauty and Pinza had a great drive to make the most of the opportunity it gave him.

Ezio Pinza in the Broadway production of South
Pacific that made his name in musical theatre

His family’s circumstances had meant that he missed out on a formal education.  As a consequence, he was not able to read music, yet he had a sharp ear. He would listen to his part played on the piano and then sing it accurately, even picking up stylistic nuances.

Seen as a successor to the great Italian basses Francesco Navarini, Vittorio Arimondi and Nazzareno De Angelis, by November 1926 he had been invited to sing at the Metropolitan Opera, where he made his debut in Spontini's La vestale, which starred the popular American soprano Rosa Ponselle in the title role.

As he became established, Pinza became associated with Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Figaro and Sarastro, as well as many roles in the Italian operas of Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi, and Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, which was sung in Italian.

Engagements at Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, soon followed. He sang in London from 1930 to 1939 and was invited to sing at the Salzburg Festival in 1934-1937 by the German conductor Bruno Walter.

Like many Italians, he felt at home in America. Pinza sang again under the baton of Toscanini in 1935, this time with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra at Carnegie Hall as the bass soloist in performances of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, one of which was broadcast on radio and recorded.

His life was rudely interrupted in 1942 after America had entered the Second World War.  All Italians and Germans living in the United States came under close scrutiny from the authorities and Pinza was accused of having a connection with Benito Mussolini, the Italian Fascist dictator.

With no warning, plain clothes FBI officers arrived at his house at Mamaroneck in Westchester County, overlooking Long Island Sound, and arrested him. After being taken to the Foley Square courthouse in Manhattan, where he was not allowed an attorney, he was detained at Ellis Island.

Pinza was only four months away from being granted his American citizenship and, fortunately for him, his fame afforded him more consideration than most of his compatriots and he was allowed to go free again after 12 weeks.

Pinza's grave

After the war, he announced his retirement from opera in 1948, when the Metropolitan Opera honoured him by naming the fountains at the new Metropolitan Opera House at the Lincoln Centre after him.

He was not finished as a singer. Embarking on a second career in Broadway musicals, he achieved more success. His role in Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific, in which the lead male part of the French planter Emil de Becque and the classic song Some Enchanted Evening were created specifically for him, turned him into a still bigger celebrity. In 1950, he received a Tony Award for best lead actor in a musical.

The fame brought him movie and television work and enabled him to buy a plush house next to the golf course at Westchester Country Club at Rye, where he was a member.  Sadly, he died suddenly in 1957 at the age of 64, having suffered a stroke. He is buried at Putnam Cemetery at Greenwich, Connecticut.

Travel tip:

Ravenna was the capital city of the Western Roman Empire from 402 until its collapse in 406. The city’s Basilica of San Vitale, one of the most important examples of early Christian Byzantine art and architecture, is famous for its wealth of Byzantine mosaics, the largest and best preserved outside Turkey, including masterpieces studded with gold, emerald and sapphire. The city was where the poet Dante lived in exile until his death in 1321. His tomb can be found in the Basilica of San Francesco, and the pretty Piazza del Popolo.

Travel tip:

The Conservatorio Martini, where Pinza received his formal musical education, can be found in Bologna’s Piazza Rossini, adjacent to the church of San Giacomo Maggiore, about 10 minutes’ walk from the city’s central square, Piazza Maggiore. Opened in 1804 as the Liceo Filarmonico di Bologna, its prestige was enhanced by its association with the composer Gioachino Rossini, who had attended the conservatory as a student, and returned later in life as a consultant.

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Ottavio Missoni - fashion designer

Former prisoner of war was also an Olympic hurdler

The fashion designer Ottavio Missoni with his wife Rosita on
the lawn of their mansion in Sumirago in 1975

The fashion designer Ottavio Missoni died on this day in 2013 at the age of 92 following an extraordinary life.

He passed away at his home in Sumirago, 55km (34 miles) north-west of Milan, having requested his release from hospital in order to spend his last days with his family.

Missoni was the co-founder of the Italian fashion brand Missoni, which he set up in 1953 with his wife, Rosita. The company became known around the world for its brightly coloured geometric knits and zigzag patterns and were among the pioneers of Italian ready-to-wear clothing lines.

Earlier, he had been an infantryman during the Second World War, fighting at the Battle of El Alamein in 1942. He was captured by the 7^th Armoured Division of the British Army, popularly known as the Desert Rats, and spent the remainder of the war in an English prisoner-of-war camp in Egypt.

After the war, he pursued his passion for competitive athletics, becoming good enough to be selected in the Italian team for the 1948 Olympics in London, where he reached the final of the 400m hurdles event.

Missoni was born in Dubrovnik, on the Dalmatian coast, in 1921. His mother was a countess, his father, Vittorio, a Friulian sea captain who had moved to Dalmatia while it was under Austrian rule. He grew up in Zadar, now part of Croatia but then called Zara and part of Italian territory, before going to college in Trieste and Milan.

The Missoni logo

He had participated in athletics events before the war. A member of the Italian national team at 16, he took part in an international meeting in Milan in 1937 in which he won the 400m in a time of 48.8 second, which remains the fastest for his age in Italian track history. In 1939, over the same distance, he won a gold medal at the International University Games in Vienna.

Sport provided his entry into the fashion business. Back home after the war, Missoni and his fellow athlete Giorgio Oberweger opened a business in Trieste making wool tracksuits, which they called Venjulia suits.

The tracksuits featured zippered legs, which Missoni has been credited with inventing. The Venjulia suits recognised the need of athletes for functional, warm garments enabling freedom of movement. In fact, they were worn by the Italian Olympic team in 1948.

It was while in London that he met 16-year-old Rosita Jelmini, an English student from Golasecca, Italy, who watched him compete.  They married in 1953, and their first son, Vittorio, was born in 1954. Luca (1956) and Angela (1958) followed.

Rosita’s family had a textiles business, making shawls, and together she and Ottavio set up a machine-knitwear workshop in Gallarate, not far from Sumirago and the town in which Rosita grew up. 

Soon they were supplying designs to the Biki boutique in Milan and to La Rinascente, the department store, where the first Missoni-labelled garments, a line of colourful vertically striped shirt-dresses, were displayed in the window in 1958. 

Ottavio Missoni in 2010

They held their first catwalk show in 1966, and the following year, presented a show at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, which landed them in controversy after the show’s lighting had the effect of turning the models’ clothing see-through, a misfortune made worse by the fact that most of the models went without underwear so as not to spoil the line of the clothes they were showing off. The show was likened to a bawdy cabaret and the Missonis were not invited back.

However, the publicity the scandal attracted helped the Missonis. Their next presentation, in Milan, drew much press attention and, as Milan grew as a fashion capital, the Missonis went on to feature in many leading fashion magazines. 

With a new factory in Sumirago, in a beautiful country setting in the shadow of Monte Rosa, they opened their first in-store boutique at Bloomingdale's in New York in 1970. Their first directly-owned boutique in Milan followed in 1976. 

The company enjoyed such heights of prestige that in 1983 they were invited to design the stage costumes for a performance of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor at Teatro alla Scala in Milan, starring Luciano Pavarotti, and in 1990 some of the costumes for the opening ceremony for the football World Cup.

In 1997, Ottavio and Rosita retired, entrusted the future of the business in their children, appointing Vittorio as marketing director and Angela as creative director, with Luca taking a technical role. The company expanded into furniture and car interiors and even set up a chain of boutique hotels.

Sadly, tragedy struck the family shortly before Ottavio died when Vittorio was killed, along with his wife, Maurizia, when a small plane in which they were travelling crashed off the coast of Venezuela.

Travel tip:

As the crow flies, the city of Zadar in Croatia is 206km (128 miles) south-east of Trieste along the Dalmatian coast. At the time of Missoni’s birth it was called Zara, and was on Italian territory as part of the settlement of the Treaty of Rapallo, which rewarded Italy’s participation on the side of the Triple Entente (France, Russia and the United Kingdom) in defeating Germany in the First World War. With considerable Venetian influence, having for many years between the 13^th and 18^th centuries been part of the Republic of Venice, it is a city with a strong Italian flavour, retaining its beauty despite being bombed heavily during the Second World War.

Travel tip:

Sumirago, where Missoni made his home, is 15km (9 miles) south of Varese, a pleasant town a short distance from Lake Maggiore and overlooking its own picturesque lake. Well known as the location of the Sacro Monte di Varese (the Sacred Hill of Varese), which is scaled along a 2.5km path that passes 14 monuments built in the early part of the 17^th century, it is also home of the imposing Palazzo Estense and Villa Recalcati. Varese also has a cathedral, the Basilica di San Vittore, who can be found in an elegant square in the historic centre.

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Graziella Sciutti - operatic soprano

Vivacious performer who became a successful director

Graziella Sciutti became an opera star in the 1950s

The operatic soprano Graziella Sciutti, a singer known for a vivacious stage presence and engaging personality who excelled in the work of Mozart, Puccini and Verdi, was born on this day in 1927 in Turin.

The daughter of an organist and pianist, she grew up in a bilingual household, speaking both Italian and her mother’s native tongue, French. Her early childhood was spent in Geneva in Switzerland before the family moved to Rome, so that she could attend the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, which is one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious musical institutions.

Sciutti wanted to play the piano like her father but it became clear she had a notable voice and she caught the eye as a soloist when she was still a student.

She was asked at the last moment to appear in a performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion, conducted by Herbert von Karajan, the up-and-coming Austrian who would become one of the greatest conductors in the world.  It was a daunting prospect, forced on her at short notice after another singer became ill, but she rose to the challenge and won accolades as a result. 

It led her to be spotted by Gabriel Dussurget, founder and leading light of the Festival at Aix-en-Provence Festival, who had enough confidence in his new discovery to cast her in 1951 in the one-woman opera, Menotti's The Telephone, a role regarded as a test for a young, immature singer.

Sciutti's vivacious character made her
a popular performer in Italy and beyond

Her ambition at that stage was to be a concert singer and she was unsure at first whether she could master the dramatics of opera, yet she was to return to Aix many times. It was there, in fact, that she began to acquire her association with the heroines of Mozart, singing Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro), Despina in Così Fan Tutte and Zerlina in Don Giovanni with distinction.  

In 1954, she made her debut at the Glyndebourne Festival in England, playing Rosina in Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville). In subsequent years she enchanted audiences as Nannetta in Verdi's Falstaff and again visited the Mozart roles of Susanna and Despina.

Sciutti undertook the role of Carolina in Cimarosa's Il Matrimonio Segreto (The Secret Marriage) in the inaugural performances of the Piccola Scala, the small theatre in Milan that adjoined the famous Teatro allaScala, in 1955.  At one stage she was nicknamed ‘the Callas of the Piccola Scala’.

Some critics felt her voice to be too thin for her to be seen as one of the great sopranos but she had the technique to project to all corners of the theatre and, for all her early doubts, she had the acting skills to make up for any shortcomings in her voice. Pretty and petite in comparison with many singers, the innocence, perkiness and coquetry demanded of many of her roles seemed to come naturally.

Her debut at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden followed in 1956. In 1961 she appeared on stage in America for the first time at the San Francisco Opera, going on to make her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York soon afterwards.

Sciutti excelled in the arias of Mozart, Bellini and others

At the Vienna State Opera she sang many of her best roles, including Nannetta in a staging of Falstaff conducted by Leonard Bernstein and directed by Luchino Visconti.

Sciutti was a regular at the Salzburg Festival for 20 years, her Mozart interpretations always in demand. Her final appearance there came in 1972 as Norina in Donizetti's Don Pasquale, conducted by Riccardo Muti.

Her voice proved enduring enough to appear at Glyndebourne even at the age of 50 as Elle in Poulenc's La Voix Humaine. This was a production she also directed, paving the way for a new career.

She directed Figaro and L'Elisir d'Amore for Canadian Opera and in 1983 her production of Puccini’s La Bohème at the Juilliard School won praise.  A year later she directed at the Met for the first time. Her 1995 staging of La Bohème at the New York City Opera won her an Emmy Award after it was broadcast on live television.

Always eager to pass on her knowledge to opera students and would-be performers, she taught at both the Royal College of Music in London and the Lyric Centre in Chicago.

She married an American singer, Robert Wahoske, in 1955, but they divorced in 1960.  She died in Geneva in 2001, a few days before what would have been her 74^th birthday, and was survived by her daughter, Susanna.

The historic headquarters of the Accademia
was in central Rome, near Piazza di Spagna

Travel tip:

Rome’s Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia is one of the oldest musical institutions in the world, founded by a papal bull (public decree) issued by Pope Sixtus V in 1585. Saint Cecilia is the patron saint of music. Its historical headquarters was in Via Vittoria, not far from Piazza di Spagna, but since 2003 it has been headquartered in Viale Pietro de Coubertin at the Renzo Piano-designed Parco della Musica in Rome. It has had a permanent symphony orchestra and choir since 1895. Alumni include Beniamino Gigli, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Ennio Morricone and Cecilia Bartoli.

An audience at the Piccola Scala in 1978

Travel tip:

The Piccola Scala, next to Teatro alla Scala, the opera house in Milan considered to be one of the world’s great opera venues, was opened in 1955 as a theatre dedicated to ancient works that were suited to a fairly intimate setting.  It had room for no more than 600 people. As well as Cimarosa's Matrimonio Segreto, early productions included works by Handel and Monteverdi. Later it staged operas by contemporary composers, including Nino Rota, who was better known for his film music but actually wrote the score for 11 operas.  Sadly, the theatre closed in 1985 after the capacity was reduced to 350 because of new regulations, too small to make it economically viable.

More reading:

How mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli has helped revive lesser-known composers

Giacomo Puccini - musical genius who assumed Verdi's mantle as Italy's greatest

Maestro Muti shows no signs of slowing down

Also on this day:

1598: The birth of astronomer Giovanni Riccioli

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Antonio Meucci - inventor of the telephone

Engineer from Florence was 'true' father of communications

Antonio Meucci, the Florentine scientist
and engineer who lived in New York

Antonio Meucci, the Italian engineer who was acknowledged 113 years after his death to be the true inventor of the telephone, was born on this day in 1808 in Florence.

Until Vito Fossella, a Congressman from New York, asked the House of Representatives to recognise that the credit should have gone to Meucci, it was the Scottish-born scientist Alexander Graham Bell who was always seen as father of modern communications.

Yet Meucci’s invention was demonstrated in public 16 years before Bell took out a patent for his device. This was part of the evidence Fossella submitted to the House, which prompted a resolution in June, 2002, that the wealth and fame that Bell enjoyed were based on a falsehood.

It has even been suggested that Bell actually stole Meucci’s invention and developed it as his own while the Italian died in poverty, having been unable to afford the patent.

Meucci’s story began when he was born in the San Frediano area of Florence, which was then part of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the first of nine children fathered by a policeman, Amatis Meucci, and his wife, Domenica.  A plaque marks the address in Via dei Serragli where he grew up.

At the age of 15, Meucci gained a place at the Florence Academy of Fine Arts as its youngest student, studying chemical and mechanical engineering. He had to leave after two years because he needed to find work but continued to study part-time.

A plaque marks the house in Florence's Via dei Serragli,
where Antonio Meucci was born in 1808

He worked as a stage technician at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence, where he constructed a type of acoustic telephone to communicate between the stage and the theatre’s control room. He married costume designer Esterre Mochi, who worked at the same theatre, in 1834.

A year after they were married, Meucci and his wife emigrated to Cuba, largely because Meucci was fascinated by research being conducted in Havana into treating illnesses with electric shocks. In helping to further this research, he discovered by accident that sounds could travel by electrical impulses through copper wire.

Realising there was commercial potential in what he had stumbled upon, he moved to the United States in 1850, acquiring a house at Staten Island, near New York City, where he set up a workshop in the basement.  He had considerable savings from his time in Cuba, which he invested in a tallow candle factory.

His personal circumstances changed, however, when severe rheumatoid arthritis left his wife paralysed and in need of care.

A replica of the handsets Meucci created for his
prototype telephone, which he unveiled in 1860

In one respect, this provided an opportunity. He devised a system, using copper wire, whereby Esterre could communicate with him by a rudimentary telephone linking to his workshop.  

This consisted of two wooden cylinders, each containing an electromagnet and a soft iron membrane, which converted the vibrations made by voice soundwaves into electrical impulses that travelled along a length of connecting wire, which were in turn reproduced as the same sounds at the other end of the line.  With handles attached, the two components resembled hand bells.

It was this device that he demonstrated in public in 1860, attracting sufficient interest that New York's Italian-language newspaper carried the story.

But events conspired against Meucci.  He improved and developed his device but his candle factory went bankrupt, which meant he had no funds to invest. His limited English made it difficult for him to find American backers, while most of his Italian friends, including the unification hero Giuseppe Garibaldi, were not from moneyed backgrounds.

It did not help that he was badly burned in an accident aboard a steamship, which further impacted on his ability to earn money. Meanwhile, needing to pay for treatment for her illness, Esterre sold his prototype machines to a second-hand goods shop for $6.

Meucci quickly made another device but could not afford the $250 needed for a definitive patent. Instead, in 1871, he filed a patent caveat - one-year renewable notice of an impending patent. Three years later he could not even find the $10 for the patent caveat.

He sent a model and technical details to the American District Telegraph Company, a subsidiary of Western Union based in New York, but failed to generate much interest. When he asked for his materials to be returned, in 1874, he was told they had been lost.

Two years later Bell, said to have worked in the laboratory where Meucci’s notes, diagrams and prototype devices were stored, filed a patent for a telephone. He subsequently struck a lucrative deal with Western Union, which made him wealthy, and a celebrity.

Suspecting that Bell had hijacked his ideas, Meucci sued. He appeared close to winning when the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case and proceedings against the Scot to annul the patent were begun in January 1887.

However, by this stage Meucci was in failing health and he died in 1889 before the process could reach a conclusion, the legal action dying with him.

The church of San Frediano in Cestello in Florence

Travel tip:

The parish of San Frediano is the part of the Oltrarno section of Florence that forms the neighbourhood around the Chiesa di San Frediano in Cestello, a church dedicated to St Fridianus, an early Christian Irish pilgrim who became bishop of Lucca. He is said to have miraculously walked across the surface of the Arno river near where the church was built.  Work began on the church in 1460 and it was rebuilt between 1680 and 1689. Although rather plain on the outside, the church contains many fine frescoes and paintings by Florentine artists.

Florence hotels from Booking.com

Teatro della Pergola in central Florence

Travel tip:

Primarily a court theatre used by the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, it was only after 1718 that the Teatro della Pergola, in Via della Pergola, was opened to the public. A highly prestigious theatre in its heyday, it was at La Pergola that the great operas of Mozart were heard for the first time in Italy. Gaetano Donizetti's Parisina and Rosmonda d'Inghilterra, Giuseppe Verdi's Macbeth and Peitro Mascagni's I Rantzau all made their debuts at the theatre.  Today, the theatre presents primarily 250 drama performances, by authors ranging from Molière to Neil Simon. Opera productions are hosted only during the annual Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. The theatre is about 10 minutes' walk from the Duomo.

More reading:

How Marconi made the world's first radio communication

Alessandro Volta - creator of the first electrical battery

What Luigi Galvani did to add a new word to the language

Also on this day:

1920: The birth of Roberto Calvi, the man they called 'God's banker'

1928: The birth of racing driver Giannino Marzotto

(Picture credits: Meucci plaque and Teatro della Pergola by Sailko; prototype telephone courtesy of the Milan Museum of Science and Technology; San Frediano in Cestello by Amada44; all via Wikimedia Commons)

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Giuseppina Strepponi – soprano

Death of the woman who inspired Donizetti and Verdi

Giuseppina Strepponi in a portrait that can
be seen at the museum at Teatro alla Scala

Opera singer Giuseppina Strepponi died on this day in 1897 at the village of Sant’Agata in the province of Piacenza in Emilia-Romagna.

She was the second wife of the composer Giuseppe Verdi and is often credited with helping him achieve his first successes, having starred in several of his early operas.

Strepponi was born Clelia Maria Josepha Strepponi in Lodi, a little over 40km south-east of Milan, in 1815.

Her father was the organist at Monza Cathedral and also a composer and he gave her piano lessons when she was very young. At the age of 15 she was enrolled at the Milan Conservatory and she won first prize for singing in her final year.

Strepponi made her professional debut in 1834 at the Teatro Orfeo in Taranto and enjoyed her first success the following spring in Trieste, singing the title role in Rossini’s Matilde di Shabran. She quickly became a celebrity, singing Donizetti, Bellini and Rossini roles all over Italy to great acclaim.

A portrait of Giuseppe Verdi in 1839, the
year of his first opera, Oberto 

She made her debut at Teatro alla Scala in Milan in 1839 as Leonora in the first production of Giuseppe Verdi’s first opera, Oberto.  Her strong performance was one of the main reasons the opera was received so well.

Despite suffering illnesses, Strepponi continued to be a popular singer in the early 1840s. She sang the title role in Donizetti’s Adelia in 1841, which he had written specifically for her. In 1842 she received acclaim for her performance of Abigaille in the world premiere of Verdi’s Nabucco at La Scala.

By 1844 she was beginning to experience vocal problems and she had a disastrous season in Palermo in 1845 when she was booed by the audience.

Most of her performances after that were in Verdi operas and she retired from the stage in February 1846 at the age of 31.

Her voice had been damaged by overwork during a career in which she had several affairs and carried on working through at least three known pregnancies.

It was only after she retired and moved to Paris to become a singing teacher that what had been a professional relationship with Verdi blossomed into something more. A widower whose first wife, Margherita, had died young, Verdi visited her there and they began a romance.

The couple returned to Italy in 1849 and began living together in Busseto, Verdi’s home town. She was shunned in the town and at church because they were not married and so the couple moved to a house in the nearby village of Sant’Agata, which is today known as Villa Verdi.

Strepponi helped Verdi’s work by translating for him and supplying comments and criticism while he was composing.

The Villa Verdi, where Strepponi and Verdi lived for
almost half a century before her death in 1897

They were finally married in 1859 and lived together happily until Strepponi became bedridden through arthritis. She was 82 when she died from pneumonia on November 14, 1897, and was initially buried in Milan.

Verdi had left instructions in his will that he wanted to be buried next to her, but after his death he was buried in another cemetery in Milan.

However, so they could be together once again, on February 26, 1901 their bodies were both transferred to be buried in the oratory at the Casa di Riposo, a retirement home for musicians Verdi had created. At the ceremony, Arturo Toscanini directed a choir singing the famous Va, pensiero chorus from Nabucco.

Travel tip:

Villa Verdi, where Strepponi died, is a house Verdi owned from 1848 till his death in 1901 in the village of Sant’Agata in the province of Piacenza. He extended the original house and developed the park around the house, planting many exotic trees. Today visitors can view some of the rooms, including Strepponi’s room, with its original bed, where she died in 1897.

Hotels in Busseto by venere.com

The Basilica Cattedrale della Vergine Assunta
dominates Lodi's Piazza della Vittoria 

Travel tip:

Lodi, the birthplace of Strepponi, is a city in Lombardy, to the south-east of Milan. The town’s main square, Piazza della Vittoria, has porticoes on all four sides and is listed by the Italian Touring Club among the most beautiful squares in Italy. In 1796, in his first major battle, the young Napoleon Bonaparte defeated the Austrians in the Battle of Lodi.

Hotels in Lodi by venere.com

More reading:

The death of Giuseppe Verdi - how Italy mourned his loss

Gaetano Donizetti: the greatest composer of lyrical 
opera

How opera brought fame and wealth to Gioachino Rossini

Also on this day:

1812: The birth of Aleardo Aleardi, the poet who was an important figure in the Risorgimento movement



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Vincenzo Bellini – opera composer

Short but successful career of Sicilian musical genius

A portrait of Vincenzo Bellini

The talented composer of the celebrated opera, Norma, was born Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini on this day in 1801 in Catania in Sicily.

Bellini became known for his long, flowing, melodic lines, which earned him the nickname, ‘The Swan of Catania’. He enjoyed great success during the bel canto era of Italian opera in the early part of the 19th century and many of his operas are still regularly performed today.

Born into a musical family, Bellini showed early talent. It was claimed he could sing an aria at 18 months and could play the piano by the age of five. Although some writers have said these are exaggerations, Bellini is known to have already begun composing music by his teens.

He was given financial support by the city of Catania to study music at a college in Naples and while he was there he was profoundly influenced by meeting the composer Gaetano Donizetti, having heard his opera, La zingara, performed at Teatro di San Carlo.

Bellini then wrote his first opera, Adelson e Salvini, which his fellow students performed to great acclaim.

In 1825, Bellini began work on what was to be his first professionally-produced opera, Bianca e Fernando. It was premiered at Teatro di San Carlo on 30 May, 1826 and was a big success. Donizetti attended the performance and wrote about it enthusiastically to his former tutor in Bergamo.

Teatro alla Scala in the 18th century

After Bellini was commissioned to compose an opera by Teatro alla Scala in Milan he moved to live in the city in 1827.

During the six years he spent in Milan he wrote four masterpieces, Il pirata, I Capuletti e I Montecchi, La sonnambula and Norma.

The tenor, Giovanni Battista Rubini, attracted rave reviews for his performance in Il pirata, having been urged by Bellini to act the part as well as sing it.

Norma was given 39 performances in its first season at La Scala and was equally popular when it was later performed in Bergamo.

When Bellini returned to Sicily in 1832, his opera, Il pirata, was a big success at the Teatro della Munzione in Messina and he was given a civic welcome when he arrived in Catania.

Excerpts from his operas were performed in a concert at the Teatro Massimo Bellini, which had been named by the city in his honour.

The Teatro Massimo Bellini in Catania

Bellini’s visit to London in 1833 was a triumph, with La sonnambula and Norma attracting excellent reviews, and he was fêted by the fashionable set when he moved on to Paris.

However, when he began composing I puritani he moved out of Paris to live in nearby Puteaux in order to concentrate fully on the opera.

The opera was premiered at the Theatre-Italien in Paris on 24 January 1835 and was given an enthusiastic reception.

In the aftermath of the opera’s success, Bellini was named by King Louis-Philippe as Chevalier of the Legion d’honneur and he was awarded the cross of the Order of Francesco I by King Ferdinand II in Naples.

But Bellini was being increasingly troubled by gastric problems and became seriously ill later in the year. The composer died on 23 September 1835 at his home in Puteaux. He was just 33 years old.

Bellini was buried in a French cemetery as a short-term arrangement and his remains were taken to Catania and reburied in the Cathedral there in 1876.

Vincenzo Bellini's tomb in the Duomo
in Catania, his birthplace

Travel tip:

Catania, where Bellini was born, is an ancient city on Sicily’s east coast, situated at the foot of Mount Etna, an active volcano. There is a monument to Bellini in the Cathedral in Piazza del Duomo and a museum dedicated to his life, the Bellini Museum, which was opened in 1930 in Palazzo Gravina-Cruyllas, the house where he was born.

Travel tip:

Teatro San Carlo in Naples, where Bellini’s first professionally-produced opera was staged, is thought to be the oldest opera house in the world. It was officially opened in 1737, way ahead of La Scala in Milan and La Fenice in Venice. The theatre is in Via San Carlo close to Piazza Plebiscito, the main square in Naples. It was designed by Giovanni Antonio Medrano for the Bourbon King of Naples, Charles I. In the magnificent auditorium the royal box is surmounted by the crown of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

More reading:

The genius of Gaetano Donizetti

Giovanni Battista Rubini - as famous in his day as Pavarotti

Teatro San Carlo - the world's oldest opera house

Also on this day:

The end of the First World War in Italy

(Photo of Bellini's tomb by G.dallorto)

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