Word: lauri-volpi
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...George Cehanovsky, 87, a former baritone at the Metropolitan who has heard most of the great voices of this century, Pavarotti combines the pastosa (soft) beauty of Beniamino Gigli with the effortless high notes of Giacomo Lauri-Volpi. Others hear echoes of Jussi Bjoerling's silvery refinement. Pavarotti inmself cites a more recent predecessor as a model: Giuseppe di Stefano, who at his best had a burnished, flowing style...
...voices nowadays--but that's only because today's crop of singers are unable to handle high notes. Jose Carerras or Placido Domingo often sing not just arias, but entire acts a whole step down. Today Tenors with "tops" are special phenomena. One need only recall singers like Giacomo Lauri-Volpi, whose upper range range with a clarion brilliance that would bury any Pavarotti high C. The great Fancesco Tamagno, the original Otello and perhaps the greatest Otello of all time, would often take arias up a half step or more because of the voice's increased power even...
Rome's operagoers remember Giuseppe Di Stefano as the handsome young tenor who sang Manon one night when terrible-tempered Tenor Lauri-Volpi fitfully refused to go on. But even before that, Di Stefano had gotten ovations that reached the ears of U.S. booking agents...
...Italian-style tenors have always been a scarce commodity, and for the past two decades they have been growing scarcer & scarcer. Opera impresarios count on the fingers of one hand (Gigli, Lauri-Volpi, Borgioli, Schipa . . .) the lusty high-voiced Latins still capable of raising even moderate-sized rafters on either side of the Atlantic. Since the death of Enrico Caruso (1921), tenor departments of U. S. opera-houses have shown a steady decline. Today their audiences count it a privilege to hear their "Ridi Pagliaccios" and "La donna e mobiles" sung by anything bigger than a microphone voice...
...opened last June its temporada grande (big season), which corresponds both in climate and in social brilliance with the winter seasons of U. S. operas. On its two greatest drawing cards the Colon could not retrench; immediately after the successful 1931 season it had signed contracts with Tenor Giacomo Lauri-Volpi and Coloratura Soprano Lily Pons. But there was no cause for regret. When Lauri-Volpi departed last month he flung exuberantly to the Argentine internal loan fund 50,000 pesos ($12,500), half of his season fee. Pretty Lily Pons got more: $27,000 for the season. Her Lucia...