Франческо Таманьо (Francesco Tamagno), 1850-1905. Карьера певца, роли, свидетельства современников.
... в статье Майкла Эспинолла (Michael Aspinall), 2007 г.
СТАТЬЯ, НАПИСАННАЯ ПО СЛУЧАЮ ВЫХОДА ПОЛНОГО СОБРАНИЯ ЗАПИСЕЙ
ФРАНЧЕСКО ТАМАНЬО
(издание Historic Masters)
Часть первая. Дорога к Отелло.
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A FULL VERSION OF AN ARTICLE WRITTEN SPECIALLY IN CONNECTION WITH THE COMPLETE EDITION OF TAMAGNO’S 12”
RECORDINGS ISSUED BY HISTORIC MASTERS.
A SHORTENED VERSION IS INCLUDED IN THE BOOKLET WHICH ACCOMPANIES THE SET.
The Career of Francesco Tamagno
The enthusiast who wants to know everything about Tamagno should read “Otello Fu”, La Vera Vita di Francesco Tamagno, il “tenore-cannone” by Ugo Piovano, Rugginenti Editore, Milano 2005, a magnificent biography which quotes extensively from reviews in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese. For accurate dating of the performances in Tamagno’s career we are indebted to Mr Thomas G. Kaufman’s chronology, considerably amplified by Piovano.
Francesco Tamagno was born in the Borgo Dora quarter of Turin on the 28th December 1850 and baptized Innocenzo Francesco. His father, Carlo Tamagno, the proud possesssor of a fine natural voice, was a wine-seller and proprietor of a modest trattoria named “Al Centauro”. Carlo and his wife Margherita had 15 children, of whom ten died either in the epidemic of cholera in 1854 or in that of miliaria in 1856.
Of the five who were spared, three studied singing: Francesco, Domenico (1843-1905) and Giovanni (1858-1910). Francesco and Domenico joined a group of young hopefuls who clubbed together to pay for private lessons: they sang their exercises under a bridge over the river Dora. Unfortunately the Tamagno boys sang much louder than the others, who resentfully forced them out of the group! They studied for a while in a Salesian school for orphans and poor boys in which sacred music played a part in the curriculum, and Francesco made his first public appearances in 1865, singing at this school and in religious services for which the Salesians provided the music.
From 1870 to 1873 Francesco and Domenico studied singing at the Liceo Musicale, today the Conservatorio di Torino (where the lessons were free), with the composer Carlo Pedrotti, who told them that, in time, they might become excellent choristers and earn a decent wage in England! Domenico graduated from the Liceo in 1871 and Francesco in 1873. During the year 1871-72 Francesco did his military service, only six months as his father was able to pay the necessary sum to reduce the period of service from the full three years.
Students at the Liceo were groomed for secondary roles or chorus work, and it seems likely that Tamagno first stepped onto the operatic stage as a member of the chorus in Gli Ugonotti at the Teatro Regio, Turin, in December 1870. He made his first appearance in a comprimario role as Gaspero in Francesco Cortesi’s La colpa del cuore on the 27th February 1872. In the 1872-3 season Tamagno was engaged for three small roles in Il Guarany, Poliuto and Ruy Blas. Telling his life story to Edmondo De Amicis in 1898 the great tenor remembered Nearco in Poliuto as being his debut role, which it was not, but it was certainly the first role in which he was noticed: at the performance (in which Mongini was singing the title role), when Nearco sings the phrase “l’anima no, chè l’anima è di Dio” Tamagno, on the spur of the moment, introduced a high note, one of the brazen trumpet kind for which he would soon become famous. (He always claimed it was a B flat, but this does not seem possible from the harmonic structure of the music.)
The early career
Having signed a contract with the theatrical agent Antonio Rosani, the young tenor embarked for Palermo, but this first season, though successful, may have been upsetting psychologically. The ship bearing the company from Messina to Palermo met with such a terrible storm that all the scenery and costumes had to be thrown overboard, which delayed opening night. Half-way through the season the impresario went bankrupt and the singers had to carry on as best they could or risk getting no pay at all. The season at the Teatro Bellini opened with La forza del destino and then Tamagno should have appeared in Don Sebastiano, but the opera was changed and so it was as Riccardo in Un ballo in maschera that he made his official debut as a leading tenor, on the 20th January 1874. In a gala performance, a mixed bill, he sang the last act of Il trovatore. On the 24th February he sang Poliuto, an opera that would remain in his repertoire right until the end, and in a concert he was able to sing two duets from the shelved Don Sebastiano. His Palermo season ended with a performance of Rossini’s Stabat Mater in April 1874, conducted by the composer Pietro Platania, director of the Palermo Conservatorio, who gave him some advice about how to improve his singing technique.
Tamagno next appeared in Ferrara in May, in Un ballo in maschera and La forza del destino. Throughout his career he enjoyed singing duets and ensembles in his concert appearances, and in June he sang the trio from I Lombardi for the first time in a Ferrara concert. The conductor in Ferrara, Antonio Buzzi, was - like many conductors in that distant age - also a singing teacher, and Tamagno took some lessons from him. At a later date he also took lessons from the famous teacher Luigi Vannuccini, also a conductor and violinist and a friend of Rossini’s.
He began the 1874-5 season in Rovigo, singing the title role in Roberto il diavolo and Tebaldo in I Capuleti ed i Montecchi, after which he went to La Fenice, Venice, for Il Guarany, Poliuto, the world première of Selvaggia by Francesco Schira, Der Freischutz (as Il franco cacciatore, of course) and Lucia di Lammermoor. It was the first time he sang with “star” singers: Josephine de Reszke sang in Guarany and Selvaggia and his Lucia was Emma Albani. After singing in Libani’s Il Conte Verde at Carpi in August 1875, Tamagno went abroad for the first time, to the Teatro Liceu, Barcelona, where he remained from October 1875 until April 1877, covering two complete seasons. Here he added to his repertoire L’africana, Saffo (Pacini), Ernani, Lucrezia Borgia, Ruy Blas, Il trovatore, La traviata, Marta, Don Carlo (in the five-act version), Gli Ugonotti, Aida and Verdi’s Requiem. Some of these roles he quickly dropped, others he clung to. Like many great Italian singers, he was a very quick learner even though he was never able to be absolutely precise in musical detail and relied heavily on the prompter.
In June 1877 Turin heard him at last at the Teatro Vittorio Emanuele in Il Guarany; he returned to the Teatro Regio in 1884 for Poliuto and in 1885 for Il profeta, but on this last occasion he fell ill and was not able to complete the full number of performances, which led to such ill-feeling and such unfriendly comments in the press that he would never sing in opera again in his native town, only in concerts. On the 26th December 1877, the opening night of the season, Tamagno made the first of many appearances at La Scala, Milan; he chose L’africana as the opera of his debut, stubbornly resisting all attempts to get him to appear in either Aida or Don Carlo. Thirteen triumphal performances were followed by eleven as Paolo in Fosca by Gomes.
He then disappeared for a while to South America, singing from May to November 1878 first at the Teatro Colon, Buenos Aires, then in Rio de Janeiro, adding to his repertoire Rigoletto, Il profeta, and Enrico by Miguel Angelo. He returned to La Scala to open the 1878-9 season with 21 performances of the title role in Don Carlo (still in five acts), in which he was praised for his increased mastery of his voice and for the new refinements in his singing: it seems that he and the baritone Giuseppe Kaschmann sang their duet in an intimate and hauntingly soft manner, though Tamagno always introduced a brilliant high C at the close, to everyone’s approval and delight.
Don Carlo was followed by Massenet’s Il re di Lahore (with Jean Lassalle in his original role) and on the 27th March by the world première of Gomes’s Maria Tudor, a flop that only scored two performances. On the 17th April Tamagno was back in Buenos Aires and later in Rio de Janeiro. He sang for the first time in Lisbon between December 1879 and April 1880, in May he was heard at Bilbao in Poliuto with Erminia Borghi-Mamo and Kaschmann, and in November sang L’africana in Florence with Battistini. That year he opened the Scala season again, with the world première of Ponchielli’s Il figliuol prodigo, followed by Ernani.
Tamagno and Verdi
In a review of the Scala Ernani published in Il Secolo on the 30-31 January 1881 we find one of the earliest references in print to a phenomenon which would soon become universal: Tamagno was criticised for singing only one strophe of the cabaletta to his aria in Act One.
Then, on the 24th March, came his first historic collaboration with Verdi, when he created Gabriele Adorno in the revised version of Simon Boccanegra with Victor Maurel in the title role and Edouard de Reszke as Fiesco. Though this helped to place Tamagno in the forefront of tenors, only ten performances were given and he never sang the opera again. Verdi had considered raising Adorno’s aria a semitone but it proved comfortable for Tamagno in the original key; some high notes that the composer had intended to introduce here for Tamagno’s voice do not seem to have got themselves written, but Piovano points out several phrases in the new Finale to Act One where Verdi might have had Tamagno’s powerful high notes in mind. In a letter to Verdi, Giulio Ricordi observed that in the last three performances Tamagno “having sung the opera several times now, had come to understand both the music and the action of his role better… he had moments of happy inspiration and aroused the audience to great enthusiasm.”
From May 1881 to October 1883 Tamagno was busy in Argentina and Brazil, adding to his repertoire Mefistofele, Guglielmo Tell and La juive (as L’ebrea). After a few performances in Bologna and Rome he made a return visit to La Scala to create Don Carlo in Verdi’s new arrangement of the work in four acts; Don Carlo was given 13 performances beginning on the 10th January 1884. A letter of Verdi’s to Ricordi stipulates that “in the duet with the Queen, the tenor should sing as though fainting, with a veiled voice and … not leaning over wide-eyed trying to follow the beat…..”, which sounds like a typically Verdian doubt about Tamagno’s ability to enter fully into his ideas.
On another occasion he worries Ricordi about the rehearsals: “Don’t try to tell me that the singers have studied their parts and know the opera. I don’t believe a word of it. Two things they certainly do not know: how to pronounce their words clearly and how to sing strictly in time. These qualities are more essential in Don Carlos than in all my other operas. Tell Faccio to get on with the rehearsals of Don Carlos, and urge him to insist above all on clear diction and strict attention to the time. This may well be pedantry! But what can you do? This opera is written in this way and must be performed thus if we are to hope for any uccess.”
Tamagno’s success was overwhelming, and the Filippo Filippi wrote of him in La Perseveranza: “Tamagno comes back showing great progress in his manner of singing, of phrasing, of shading effects, singing in mezza voce, bringing out the accents of impassioned music and of immersing himself in the character he represents….. I cannot help warning the esteemed tenor, however, that he comes rather too often to the very front of the stage to sing his most energetic phrases….”
Tamagno sang Don Carlo only once again, in Buenos Aires in 1890.
Preparing for “Otello”
After finishing his Scala season with 16 performances of Gli Ugonotti and three of Il profeta, Tamagno returned to Buenos Aires, where he sang La Gioconda for the first time, with Elena Teodorini and Medea Mei-Figner, as well as his more usual repertoire, then appeared with the same company at the Teatro Solis, Montevideo, where he also sang La favorita with Mei-Figner. In this season in Uruguay he sang 10 performances of 7 operas in 13 days!
On the 8th February 1885 he was back at La Scala for Il profeta, Mefistofele and the world première of Ponchielli’s Marion Delorme (17th March 1885). A very short season followed in Buenos Aires and Rio (May-August). We find him in Barcelona for Poliuto in December, then in March and April 1886 he sang for the first time in Madrid in Guglielmo Tell and Aida; after singing Poliuto and Aida in Lisbon in May he returned to Madrid for a few performances in October. He was keeping himself free for Otello, which, he knew, was going to secure his place in history (as well as usefully increasing his future fees).
On the 26th December 1886 the future cast of Otello - Tamagno, Maurel, Romilda Pantaleoni and Francesco Navarini - under the baton of Franco Faccio, opened the Scala season in Aida. Tamagno, with boyish eagerness, made himself available for rehearsals with Verdi and Faccio and Verdi’s often expressed doubts and hesitations are well documented. We might just quote his letter to Faccio of the 29th October 1886: ”I urge you make Tamagno, when he arrives, thoroughly study his part. He is so imprecise in his reading of music that I really want him to study the role with a thorough musician who can get him to sing the notes with their full value and in time.” Ricordi was able to reassure him, in November, that “Tamagno is studying every day with Faccio, with all his heart and with the greatest love, and that Faccio is rather pleased with him.”
From Verdi’s letters, from reviews and other sources Giorgio Gualerzi has shown the development of the relationship between composer and singer, singer and role (Gualerzi, Esultate! Otello c’è: si chiama Tamagno in the volume Il Titanico Oricalco / Francesco Tamagno published by the Teatro Regio, Turin in 1997). In Boito’s words: “Giuseppe Verdi had decided that Tamagno should take the leading role in the appalling tragedy even before composing it; he was, therefore, the first to guess that he would be capable of a formidable performance. Then, when the opera was ready and put into rehearsal he was the first to admire Tamagno as singer and tragedian; in fact, the Maestro’s expectations were greatly surpassed.”
The impresario, critic and historian Gino Monaldi says that on the evening of 5th February 1887 Tamagno appeared “suddenly transformed into a great artist”. This miracle was “the work of Verdi”, who had tried “to instil the eloquence of art into that voice …. genius is allpowerful, and the proof of that is that Tamagno, stimulated by the great Maestro, suddenly changed his nature and underwent a complete metamorphosis in those few months.” (Monaldi, Cantanti Celebri del XIX Secolo, Roma, Nuova Antologia [1929].)
Although Dottor Piovano quotes a review from 1880 criticizing Tamagno for a lack of roundness in the medium register, an emission not perfectly natural and poor diction, many other reviews confirm the impression that throughout his career he studied continually to perfect his method and refine his artistry.
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Валентин Серов, "Портрет Франческо Таманьо" (1891), Третьяковская Галерея
courtesy of http://vserov.ru
Фотографии Ф. Таманьо из собрания Принстонского университета
courtesy of www.cs.princeton.edu