| Subject: Mario Del Monaco |
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Oct. 16, 1982
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Date Posted: Tuesday, October 16, 2012, 09:48:31pm
Opera Singer. Called, either in admiration or in derision, the "Brass Bull of Milan", he was considered his generation's leading dramatic tenor and its premiere exponent of Giuseppe Verdi's tragic Moor "Otello". Initially a violin student he trained in Pesaro and later at the Rome Opera School, early-on forming a professional partnership with soprano Renata Tebaldi that was to last for many years. Del Monaco made his operatic debut at Milan's Teatro Puccini on December 31, 1940, as LT Pinkerton in Puccini's "Madame Butterfly", a part not really suited to his voice; throughout his career he preferred the heavier "tenore robusto" roles such as Umberto Giordano's doomed poet of the French Revolution "Andrea Chenier", Leoncavallo's tragic clown Canio from "I Pagliacci", Puccini's painter Mario Cavaradossi in "Tosca", Manrico in Verdi's "Il Trovatore", and Rhadames from the same composer's "Aida". Del Monaco's "signature piece" was to be the title role in Verdi's "Otello", which he sang, according to one estimate, 427 times in all of the world's leading opera houses; he was first heard at Covent Garden, London, in 1946, made his American debut in 1950 at San Francisco as Rhadames, and bowed at New York's Metropolitan Opera that same year as Des Grieux from Puccini's "Manon Lescaut". Heard through the 1950s in New York, most of his later career was spent in Europe. He retired in 1975 leaving a large legacy of recordings, including complete readings of "Otello" and "Andrea Chenier", many of which are still available. At his death from chronic renal disease, he was, at his request, buried in his Otello costume.
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