Björling, Caruso , Gigli
Three Legendary Tenors in Opera and Song

Notes by Norman White and Nigel Douglas











Enrico Caruso

Enrico Caruso, was the most celebrated and sought after singer of his time, and possibly the greatest tenor of the century. Born in Naples in 1873, he was the fifteenth out of twentyone children and the first to get past infancy. His early musical and general education was given by the church where he sang as a choir boy in his beloved Naples. Finding a voice teacher proved almost impossible, as each teacher told him that he had neither voice nor talent! Fortunately, Caruso had the determination to persuade a celebrated Neapolitan teacher to allow him to sit in on other students’ lessons. By doing this he was able to learn a basic vocal technique and was eventually given lessons on his own.

His début took place on March 15th 1895 performing a role in a now totally forgotten opera, L’Amico Francesco. This was in one of the many back street theatres in Naples. During the first few years he had vocal difficulties especially with his top notes. It took him some time to secure this part of his voice. For his first engagement as Rodolfo in La Bohème the condition of his contract was that he must get approval from Puccini himself. After Caruso had sung a few pages, Puccini leapt from the piano saying 'Who sent you to me? God!'. Puccini never forgot the thrill of hearing that voice for the first time. But there was still the problem of the top C, in his first aria, ‘Che gelida manina . Puccini transposed the aria down a semitone, thus solving the problem. Even for his début at La Scala Milan in 1902 under the baton of Toscanini, Caruso still had to transpose the aria.

The quality and artistry of the young Caruso set the operatic world alight. A new star had arrived and the world wanted to hear him. This coincided with the development of the gramophone as a serious instrument of entertainment. One of its leading recording engineers, Fred Gaisberg, happened to be in Milan in February 1902 and heard the almost unknown tenor at La Scala. He asked him to record ten records the next day. His fee was 100 guineas, which Gaisberg’s London directors thought too high. Those first ten records were to earn the Gramophone Company millions over the next fifty years.

Caruso made his début at Covent Garden as the Duke in Verdi’s Rigoletto in 1903, followed a few months later by his début at the Metropolitan Opera, New York. For the next seventeen years he was to sing in Europe during the spring and autumn, and with the Metropolitan every winter. Wherever he sang he was received with thunderous applause by the audience and high critical acclaim by the press. He was a totally committed and accomplished professional. During one of his performances of La Bohème the bass lost his voice just before his famous Coat Song. Caruso sang the aria for him facing upstage, while the bass mimed.

He performed in thirty-seven different operas at the Metropolitan and recorded more than 260 titles, which display the development of his voice from the lyrical quality of his 1904 recordings to the dramatic baritonal timbre of his final years. Caruso died at the height of his career, aged forty-eight, in 1921, but the legacy he has left is so remarkable that we can still fully appreciate the magnificence of a tenor whose name has become synonymous with greatness.

Beniamino Gigli

Beniamino Gigli was born on March 20th 1890 in Recanati near Ancona on the Adriatic coast of Italy. Like his great predecessor Enrico Caruso he came from a very poor family, the youngest of six children. His father eked out a meagre living as a shoemaker. There wasn’t any money for education so this came from the church, with musical education from the organist and choirmaster.

From an early age it was recognised that Gigli had a unique ability to communicate through his singing; he said in later life that he was born to sing. At the age of ten he joined the cathedral choir school which further developed his musicianship but once his voice broke he had to begin work in order to earn money for the family. It wasn’t until 1911 that he was given a scholarship to enter the Liceo Musicale di Santa Cecilia in Rome his teachers being the veteran baritone Antonio Cotogni and Enrico Rosati.

In 1914 he entered a singing competition. Out of 102 participants, 32 of them tenors, Gigli was judged to be the outstanding singer and won first prize. One of the judges was the world famous tenor Alisandro Bonci who wrote in his notes ‘at last we have found the Tenor’. Gigli made his début at the Teatro Sociale in Rovigo on 15th October 1914 as Enzo in La Gioconda. The next two years were spent in Italy developing his repertoire with Manon, Tosen, Adriana Lecouvreur, Mefistofele, Cavalleria Rusticana, La Favorita, Lucia and Iris. His voice was a pure lyric of exceptional beauty and ease of delivery, reminding his Italian audiences of the young Caruso and generating the same enthusiasm. In 1917 he travelled out of Italy for the first time, to Spain, again winning great enthusiasm from the audiences.

1918 was the most important year of his life for he made his first gramophone records and was invited by Toscanini to join La Scala for the season 1918-19. During 1917 HMV had opened an Italian office and recording studios in Milan, the musical director being Maestro Carlo Sabaino. In May 1918 the composer Mascagni introduced Gigli to Sabaino who invited him to make a test record the result being the following letter to Will Gaisberg of HMV head office.

Dear Will

Sabajno will be writing to you about a new tenor named Gigli who has been singing in Rome and here and making an awful hit.

I have heard him and today I made a test of his voice. I tell you he is wonderful and don’t hesitate to follow Sabajno’s advice about securing him because he is going to have a great career. You can describe him as a 2nd Caruso except he has greater vocal flexibility. It is a real lyric voice that rings out all over the place giving you the impression of illimitable reserve. He is about 24 and robust health, average height and shows extraordionary intelligence for a tenor.

The Columbia have already made him an offer so we are not alone in the ring. We lost Schipa and for goodness sake don’t let us lose Gigli.

HMV didn’t lose Gigli and except for a period of nine years from 1921-30 when he recorded for Victor in New York his association with HMV lasted the full length of his international career 1918-55.

After his successful début at La Scala in Boïto’s Mefistofele with Toscanini conducting he was invited to South America to perform in Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. In 1920 with Caruso ill he was invited to join the Metropolitan Opera. His début was as Faust in Mefistofele on November 26th 1920, when he was described as uninvolved physically but showing a voice of fine quality and style.

Gigli’s acting and stage appearance didn’t improve as his figure grew rounder, but this didn’t seem to matter because of his wonderful gift of communication through the great variety of colours he could paint with his voice.

After leaving the Metropolitan in 1932 he returned to Italy and continued his career based in Europe while still performing throughout the world.

His stage and concert career lasted for more than forty years, he recorded more than 300 records and made over twenty films, and he quite rightly earned the title 'The Peoples’ Singer'.

Beniamino Gigli died in Rome of a heart attack on November 30th 1957.


© 1990 Norman White

JUSSI BJÖRLING

Jussi Björling will be remembered by most opera lovers and record collectors as a kind of ‘ex officio’ Italian tenor, a singer in the line of succession which can be drawn from Caruso to Pavarotti. In his maturity his voice displays all the flow, the sweep and the beauty of the truly regal Italian tenors, but it is a beauty quite different from theirs. It is not the uncomplicated beauty of the golden Mediterranean sunshine, but the haunting beauty of the more melancholy and introspective North.

Björling was born on February 5th (or possibly 2nd) 1911 in a place called Stora Tuna, some 200 miles from Stockholm, and few singers can have been more inevitably predestined to a singing career than he. His father had been a good enough tenor to reach the Metropolitan Opera, and Jussi was gifted with an exceptional boy’s voice, as were both his brothers. The four of them formed what was billed as The Björling Male Quartet, and toured first Sweden and then the many Swedish communities in the United States while Jussi was between the ages of 8 and 11.

By the time Björling was 16 he had lost both his parents and life became a struggle to survive. He did so thanks to a number of labouring jobs, and then, while still only 17, he applied for an audition with the leading Swedish tenor of the day, Carl Martin Oehmann. This resulted in an immediate recommendation to the Director of the Royal Opera, Stockholm, and on September 17th 1928 an interesting item appeared in the minutes of the Opera’s Board of Management, namely that Mr Josse (sic) Björling should be granted a Stipendium of 320 krone per month (then a very generous sum), to pay not only for his tuition in the Conservatorium but also for his board and lodging and a new suit of clothes.

By 1930, while he was still in his 20th year, Björling was considered ready for the stage of the Royal Opera, and he was given an official debut as Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni. Four months later he was entrusted with the even more demanding role of Arnold in Rossini’s Guillaume Tell, and by 1935 he had already clocked up the astonishing number of 44 different roles. At the age of 24 he was singing roles as punishing as Florestan and Manrico, and when he made his international debut it was a classic case of jumping in at the deep end. In the Vienna State Opera, no less, partnering Gina Cigna, one of Italy’s leading dramatic sopranos, and conducted by the great Victor de Sabata he sang Radames in Aida, and he sang it in Swedish!

Within the next two years he had appeared either in opera or concert in Paris, Dresden,

Brussels, Prague, London, Salzburg, New York, Chicago and Buenos Aires, which is not bad going by the age of 26. In Salzburg he sang Don Ottavio and the Verdi Requiem under Toscanini, and his New York debut must in its own way have been equally challenging - a concert in Carnegie Hall, which included partnering the formidable Maria Jeritza, 24 years his senior, in the Quarrel Duet from Cavalleria Rusticana.

Björling’s vocal splendour was complimented by a quite exceptional musical flair. His colleagues were frequently amazed by the speed with which he learnt new roles, and once they were in his head they stayed there. It was reckoned that he could go on stage at a moment’s notice in about 20 roles, and given 24 hours’ warning in twice that number. He was not perhaps the sunniest of souls, and Ivor Newton, the distinguished accompanist who played for Björling’s British concert debut in 1937 left an illuminating pen portrait in his memoirs.

‘He was a man of surprising contradictions; as an artist he was superb, with a remarkable range and an impeccable style... As a man he was obstinate, difficult, taciturn and unusually lazy. He hated to rehearse and would find endless excuses - his health, the weather, all varieties of ingenious reasons - to avoid doing so.’

Perhaps it was this complexity of his personality, this ability to communicate so much more easily through singing than in everyday life, which helped to give his voice such a deeply affecting quality. It was described as ‘a voice heavy with unshed tears,’ and after his death on September 9th 1960 at the age of only 49 it was a voice sadly missed on the concert platforms and operatic stages of both Europe and America.


© 1992 Nigel Douglas

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