Guido Brignone (6 December 1886 – 6 March 1959) was an Italian film director. He was the father of actress Lilla Brignone.

Brignone was born in Milan, Italy. He was the first Italian Director to win the Venice Film Festival or Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica, the oldest film festival in the world, with Best Italian Film, Teresa Confalonieri (1934).

He died in Rome in 1959.

External links[link]

• Guido Brignone at the Internet Movie Database

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Caterina Boratto
Caterina Boratto, photographed by Angelo Frontoni in her apartment in Rome in the eighties
Born	(1915-03-15)15 March 1915 Turin, Italy
Died	14 September 2010(2010-09-14) (aged 95) Rome, Italy
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1937–1993
Spouse	Armando Ceratto (?-?) 1 child

Caterina Boratto (15 March 1915 – 14 September 2010) was an Italian film actress.^[1] She appeared in 50 films between 1937 and 1993.

Selected filmography[link]

• 8½ (1963)
• Juliet of the Spirits (1965)
• Me, Me, Me... and the Others (1966)
• Danger: Diabolik (1968)
• Footprints on the Moon (1975)
• Salò (1975)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Caterina Boratto at the Internet Movie Database
• Caterina Boratto at AllRovi

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Tito Schipa.

Tito Schipa (27 December 1888 – 16 December 1965) was an Italian tenor. He is considered one of the finest tenori di grazia in operatic history. He was endowed with a natural, sensuous voice which he deployed with great intelligence and taste.

Biography[link]

Schipa was born Raffaele Attilio Amedeo Schipa in Lecce into an Arbëreshë family^[1]; his birthday was recorded as January 2, 1889 for military conscription purposes.^[2] He studied in Milan and made his operatic debut at age 21 in 1910 at Vercelli. He subsequently appeared throughout Italy and in Buenos Aires in Argentina. In 1917, he created the role of Ruggiero in Puccini's La rondine.

In 1919, Schipa travelled to the United States, joining the Chicago Opera Company. He remained with the Chicago company until 1932, whereupon he appeared at the New York Metropolitan Opera from 1932 to 1935, and again in 1941. He also sang at the San Francisco Opera, beginning in 1924.

From 1929 to 1949 he performed regularly in Italy, including at La Scala, Milan and the Rome Opera. He returned to Buenos Aires to sing in 1954. In 1957, he toured the Soviet Union.

Schipa's artistry is preserved on film. For example, in 1929 he appeared in a Vitaphone movie short, singing "M'appari tutt'amor" from Flotow's opera Martha.

Schipa's stage repertoire, which in his early career had encompassed a wide range of Verdi and Puccini roles, eventually contracted to about 20 congenial Italian and French operatic roles, including Massenet's Werther, Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore and Cilea's L'arlesiana. In concert, Schipa performed a preferred array of lyrical operatic arias and songs, including Neapolitan and Spanish popular songs. He delivered each of them with an infectious spirit and a refined sense of style.

Schipa made numerous audio recordings of arias and songs during his career, beginning in Italy in 1913. His recorded output included a famous 78-rpm set of Donizetti's Don Pasquale, made in 1932. This was one of the earliest complete opera recordings and it is still in circulation on CD.

Like his contemporary Richard Tauber, Tito Schipa was an early exponent of that rare breed of tenor who also conducts. (Latterly, Plácido Domingo carries on that tradition.) Although some contemporary critics considered Schipa's voice to be small in size, restricted in range and slightly husky in timbre, he was still capable of provoking intense public outpourings of support among his legion of fans. These fans were enthralled by Schipa's superior musicianship, as well as by his winning personality and his ability to breathe life into even the most trite song or hackneyed aria. Michael Scott (The Record of Singing: 1978), while admiring Schipa's charm and taste, points out that it is not correct to say that Schipa was a master of bel canto; indeed Scott and others regard Schipa's recording of "Il mio tesoro" from Mozart's Don Giovanni as one of the worst ever made, with sloppy runs and sketchy ornamentation. To be fair Schipa himself did not claim to be an exponent of the bel canto style.

Although he undertook concert engagements until 1962, Schipa retired from the operatic stage in 1958 to teach voice, firstly in Budapest. He died from diabetes in 1965 at the age of 77 in New York City, while teaching there.

He was a National Patron of Delta Omicron, an international professional music fraternity.^[3]

References[link]

• Tito Schipa (Grandi Tenori.com) - GrandiTenori's site on Schipa.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Tito Schipa

• TitoSchipa.it - English version of the Italian site run by the Schipa family.
• Tito Schipa at the Internet Movie Database.
• YouTube - Tito Schipa sings "Una furtiva lagrima" from L'elisir D'amore - A 1929 video of Schipa singing the aria "Una furtiva lagrima" from Gaetano Donizetti's L'elisir D'amore.
• History of the Tenor - Sound Clips and Narration

Francesco Albanese (13 August 1912, Torre del Greco, Naples – 11 June 2005, Rome) was a lyric tenor, particularly associated with the Italian repertory.

Albanese studied in Rome with Francesco Salfi, and made his stage debut in 1940, at the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, as Evandre in Gluck's Alceste, where he remained until 1942, also singing Almaviva, Fenton, Rinuccio.

In 1942, he made debut at La Fenice in Venice, as Ramiro, at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence, as Don Ottavio, and at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, as Fenton.

After the war, he began appearing abroad, notably at the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in Lisbon, the Royal Opera House in London, the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, and the Hungarian Opera House in Budapest.

His roles included; Nemorino in L'elisir d'amore, Jeník in Bedřich Smetana's La sposa venduta, Ernesto in Don Pasquale, Ismaele in Nabucco, Faust, Rodolfo in La bohème, Giuliano in Gustave Charpentier's Luisa, Wolfgang Capito in Paul Hindemith's Mathis il pintore, Avito in Italo Montemezzi's L'amore dei tre re, Giasone in Luigi Cherubini's Medea, Pilade in Christoph Willibald Gluck's Ifigenia in Tauride and Rinaldo in Gioachino Rossini's Armida, etc.

Albanese had a fine, well-schooled voice. He can be heard on record in La traviata and Ifigenia in Tauride, both opposite Maria Callas.

Sources[link]

• Grove Music Online, Elizabeth Forbes, Oxford University Press, April 2008.

External links[link]

• http://www.naxos.com/artistinfo/bio7007.htm