Giacomo Lauri-Volpi

Note by Roland Vernon











The catastrophic and unexpected passing of Enrico Caruso in 1921 left New York's Metropolitan Opera bereft of its most marketable asset. The company's shrewd general manager, Gatti-Casazza, feared serious consequences for the world's prime opera house should the dead tenor's prized crown not be assumed by new talent without delay. The memory of Oscar Hammerstein's rival Manhattan company, which nearly upstaged the Met in the popular appeal of the artists it attracted, was still fresh in the mind, as was the brilliance of the young Tito Schipa, who had slipped the Met net and was currently enjoying enormous success in Chicago. Giovanni Martinelli, had for some years been securely hooked on the long term roster, and in 1920 a new recruit was found in the person of Beniamino Gigli. Two years later yet another leading Italian tenor was invited to join ranks, one who was not only to share the lyric roles with Gigli - much to both men's unending chagrin - but who would extend his repertoire into the realms of This was a tenor with a voice so distinct in timbre and quality, that the opera world has always been divided in its appreciation of him. There are those who have criticised the tight, fast quiver in the sustained tone, which was particularly apparent in the first half of his career. Others object to what they consider to be his coarse indulgence in feats of tenor extravaganzas, with particular regard to prolonged high notes. But to most, contemporary audiences and present-day record collectors alike, he is considered an artist of supreme worth, whose voice, at its prime, contained an ingredient of unsurpassed richness, a thread of gold, plaintive in quality, which caught at the heart-strings.

Giacomo Volpi (Lauri was a later addition) was probably born on December 11th 1892, although there are separate claims that the year was in fact 1893, or even 1894. He was the fifteenth child of a businessman from Lanuvio, a small town to the south east of Rome. He was sent to a seminary, having lost both parents at the age of eleven, and went on to attend Rome University as a student of law. Indeed, Lauri-Volpi is distinguished by being one of the few leading tenors of the era to have received a first class academic education and to have cultivated a life-long gift as a man of letters. His many books (some on opera, others concerned with wider philosophical issues, and even a little fiction) reveal an artist of considerable intellectual calibre and spiritual conviction.

After graduating from the University, he began vocal studies at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome under the tutorship of an ageing Antonio Cotogni. At one time a celebrated baritone, the eighty-three-year-old Cotogni had a reputation as one of the country's finest teachers, and the basic technique he instilled within the young Lauri-Volpi in just one year of lessons kept the voice afloat, despite relentless abuse in his latter life, for sixty years. The First World War cut short the tenor's studies with Cotogni, and when he returned at the end of the conflict - a captain, with a distinguished fighting record behind him - he found his beloved maestro had died. The teaching method of Cotogni's successor did not find favour with the headstrong young divo, and he abandoned the Academy to prepare himself for a professional debut.

The opportunity to launch his career arrived as a result of a chance meeting with a friend and former fellow student, who arranged for Volpi to sing the role of Arturo in Bellini's I Puritani, on September 2nd 1919 at Viterbo, near Rome. The tenor performed his debut under the name Giacomo Rubini, which perhaps indicates the style of singing he aspired to in those early days, and the class of tenor beside whom he imagined himself ranked. Supreme master of His early promise was clearly noted, as a mere four months later he was to appear at Rome's principal opera house, the Costanzi, as des Grieux in Massenet's Manon, alongside a first-class cast which included Rosina Storchio and Ezio Pinza. News of his success spread fast, and in a short while he was in demand at every major opera house of the world: after Rome in 1920 came Rio and Buenos Aires, Trieste, Genoa and Milan (Teatro dal Verme); then in 1921 Bologna, Madrid, Barcelona and Monte Carlo; La Scala in 1922, the Met in 1923, London (as Andrea Chénier) and Paris (as Cavaradossi) in 1925.

His association with the Met was cut short in 1933 when he refused to accept Gatti-Casazza's salary cuts. Only Lauri-Volpi and Gigli, out of the entire company of principals, were not prepared to stand by the Met and its management at this time of economic depression, when costs needed to be reduced drastically to ensure survival. The two tenor rivals, sparring partners to the end, departed the company under a cloud and returned home to Italy. Lauri-Volpi had appeared in 232 performances at the Met, in a total of 26 operas. There were plans afoot for him to return to New York for the 1940-41 season, but with the arrival of the Second World War, the Duce was unwilling to let slip his favourite tenor.

Lauri-Volpi's undisguised association with the fascists did little to enhance his post-war reputation, particularly in the former Allied nations. Mussolini had made him a full colonel in the Italian army, and like Schipa, he was called upon to sing at patriotic and military functions. With the Allied troops advancing in the closing months of the war, he slipped out of Italy and settled in Spain.

An examination of Lauri-Volpi's recorded legacy brings to light these phases of his career, each involving a separately defined technical approach to repertoire. The first stage, and that which relates most closely to this compilation, comes to an end, broadly speaking with the recordings of 1934. Up to and including this time, his vocal delivery is refreshingly unencumbered; there is an apparent freedom from artificial muscular control on his instrument, which allows full application of his undoubted musical intelligence to phrasing and legato. The sensitivity to dynamic variation breathes through every musical statement, and the brazen sheen of his upper register, when allowed full expression, springs from the selfsame source that supplied vitality to the exquisite mezza voce a moment before. The voice is wholly integrated, and this is bel canto of the purest kind, yet edged with 'heroic' potential. The music itself requires as much: Meco all'altar di Venere has genuinely spinto demands along its arduous course, as does the climax of A te o cara.

The 1934 renditions of Addio fiorito asil, Ch'ella mi creda and Un dì all'azzurro spazio reveal the beginnings of his second stage: the voice still has the capacity to incorporate fine gradations of dynamics, and there are of course moments when he slips into the beautiful 'vocalisation' of former times, but his singing is at this point instilled with greater dramatic vigour. In keeping with the musical fashion of the day, elegance of vocal line has been sacrificed to stirring theatrical effect. The repertoire of the verismo composers (and here I include Puccini and Giordano in that category) demanded as much. The recordings from this period support the claims that Lauri-Volpi became the generation's finest interpreter of Puccini's Calaf (Turandot).

By the time he returned to the international circuit in the late 1940s there was widespread feeling that his vocal skills had begun to decline. This was the third, and by any standards, least spectacular phase of his career. The limpid sensuality of the young voice had all but vanished, and the tenor began to give greater emphasis to detached, heavily-driven top notes. As brilliant and powerful as these may have been, they were by no means integrated into the complete voice as they had been twenty years previously, and the result was an uneven tone consisting of a forte which was forced and sometimes off-pitch, and a piano mezza voce which sounds pale in comparison to its earlier equivalent. The quick vibrato, or 'bleat,' which many had criticised before, had now disappeared; but it appears to have been ironed out forcibly, perhaps as a result of tackling the heavier roles such as Manrico, Calaf and Otello. All three of these he sang to great acclaim, and certain elements of his performances of them on record have never been equalled; but it was achieved at a price, and that price was the unearthly, intimate delicacy so apparent in the 1920s recordings, that sheer bel canto seamlessness of delivery, which he seemed to apply with equal success to Bellini or Mascagni. It comes as no surprise to learn that the possessor of this fabulous, flexible instrument chose to call himself Giacomo Rubini at his debut, as bumptious as such a choice might seem.

Lauri-Volpi's career was long and eventful, punctuated with triumphs and temperamental outbursts, both of which earned him a formidable reputation, so that by the late 1950s, with his voice worn but still serviceable, he had become a revered institution amongst practising opera singers, admired and a little feared by all who crossed his path. Tito Gobbi relates an amusing anecdote in his biography of how the great veteran tenor expected an entire company to be assembled for rehearsal before his arrival on the stage, and that they should rise deferentially from their seats at his appearance. He would proceed to greet fellow principals with a touch of condescension, pretending not to recognise even those with whom he had worked in the past. Even in the earlier days his career was hampered by flashes of arrogance, angering conductors, bewildering colleagues, and alarming employers the world over.

His history as a committed professional is scarred with tales of broken contracts and angry cancellations. His 1920 Fonotipia recordings in Milan were only achieved because he unofficially 'released himself' from the Costanzi company, with whom he had concurrently been touring in South America. He is reputed to have cut short his debut season at La Scala, in 1922, because of a quarrel with Toscanini as to whether he should be allowed free rein to interpolate unwritten high notes and cadenzas into his interpretations. He had a similar dispute with the conductor Vittorio Gui in 1939, concerning the top Cs in Di quella pira, from Verdi's Il Trovatore. In 1947 he walked out of a production of Manon, especially staged to celebrate his twenty-fifth anniversary in opera, after a row with the leading soprano. It seems fitting that an artist with so famous and sharp a temper should have concluded his career in a stage partnership with the most fiery diva of them all, Maria Callas.

This indefatigable tenor continued to appear on stage until 1959 (Il Trovatore in Rome), sustaining an enviable professional schedule well past the age that so many of today's singers find it necessary to retire. Far from vanishing into the side-lines, he went on cultivating his voice up to his eighty-first year, when he astounded the musical world by releasing a record of operatic arias (1973). This was the same voice that Gatti-Casazza had wisely selected to help him replace the irreplaceable Caruso as a principal tenor at the Met a full fifty years previously.

Giacomo Lauri-Volpi died a respected elder statesman of his craft in 1979, at Burjasot, near Valencia. Up until his last days he had continued to write, and contributed thoughtful commentaries and reminiscences to musical publications around the world.


© 1993 Roland Vernon

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