Mario Ancona - La Traviata - Di Provenza - Victor GP 06 87006 .wmv
Mario Ancona -
La Traviata - Di Provenza -
Victor GP 06 87006 - enregistré le 27 février 1907
Mario Ancona (
February 28,
1860 --
February 23, 1931), was a leading
Italian baritone and master of bel canto singing. He appeared at some of the most important opera houses in
Europe and
America during what is commonly referred to as the "
Golden Age of
Opera".
Ancona was born into a middle-class
Jewish family at
Livorno,
Tuscany, on February 28, 1860. After embarking on a business career he decided to study voice with a local singing teacher named Matteini in his native city of Livorno.
Later, he took lessons from Giuseppe
Cima in
Milan.
Ancona is reputed to have made his debut as an amateur singer as far back as
1880; but according to
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera—from which many of the ensuing appearance dates, venues and career highlights are taken—his earliest known professional appearance in an opera did not occur until 1889, when he sang the role of Scindia in Massenet's
Le roi de Lahore in
Trieste. Not long afterwards, he appeared in another Massenet opera, Le Cid, at
Italy's principal theatre—
La Scala, Milan. His arrival at
La Scala so soon after his debut reflects the excellence of the technical grounding that he must have received as an amateur performer.
On May 21, 1892, Ancona was asked to create the part of
Silvio in the first performance of
Leoncavallo's
Pagliacci, which took place at Milan's
Teatro Dal Verme with
Arturo Toscanini conducting. The next year, he appeared in the first
London performance of Pagliacci at the
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. On this occasion, however, he sang the role of Tonio. (
Soprano Nellie Melba and tenor
Fernando De Lucia were also in the high-quality cast.)
Ancona would appear regularly at
Covent Garden until
1901, being held in high esteem by London audiences. He also sang as a guest artist in
Cairo,
Lisbon,
Madrid,
Warsaw,
Moscow,
St. Petersburg,
Chicago,
Boston and
Buenos Aires.
The New York Metropolitan Opera first engaged him in 1893. He sang successfully at the Met until 1897, when he went back to Europe. In 1906-1908, he returned to
New York—this time to join the
Manhattan Opera Company, where he was paid a generous fee. He became a special favourite of this company, which had been established by
Oscar Hammerstein I in direct rivalry to the Met. His suave interpretation of
Mozart's
Don Giovanni was singled out for particular praise by newspaper reviewers and the
Manhattan's audiences.
Ancona sang in
Paris in
1908, and again in
1914, at the
Sarah Bernhardt theatre, where he was complimented by Bernhardt in person for his impressive singing. The illustrious
French actress was not alone in her admiration for Ancona's vocal artistry.
Music critics on both sides of the
Atlantic commended Ancona on his elegant singing style and beautiful voice, with its easy top register and open-throated emission of homogenous tone. Indeed, the great tenor
Jean de Reszke called him the best-schooled Italian baritone of his era. His histrionic skills were less developed however, and he was not considered to be an especially imaginative or exciting interpretive artist. Physically, he was said to resemble
King Edward VII of
England because of his pointed beard and ample waistline.
The fact that Ancona was able to establish himself as a major singer in the face of intense competition from a host of other first-class baritones is a testament to his sheer quality as a vocalist. His main Italian rivals in the period between his debut in 1889 and the outbreak of
World War I were:
Mattia Battistini,
Antonio Scotti,
Giuseppe Pacini,
Antonio Magini-Coletti,
Giuseppe Campanari and
Giuseppe Kaschmann (born
Josip Kasman)—and, from a younger generation of verismo opera-influenced baritones,
Titta Ruffo,
Riccardo Stracciari,
Pasquale Amato,
Giuseppe De Luca,
Eugenio Giraldoni,
Mario Sammarco, Domenico Viglione-Borghesi and the promising newcomer
Carlo Galeffi.
According to the critic
Michael Scott, author of The Record of Singing, Ancona's smooth, fluent and refined method of singing pre-dated the verismo movement. His style and technique were particularly well suited to the operas of
Verdi, and to the bel canto works composed by
Bellini and
Donizetti (such as
I Puritani,
Lucia di Lammermoor and
La favorite). Ancona's repertoire of Verdi parts included
Germont, Di
Luna,
Rigoletto, Amonasro and
Iago, as well as
Don Carlos in Ernani.
Ancona also undertook roles composed by Leoncavallo (Silvio and Tonio),
Puccini (Lescaut and Marcello), Mascagni (
Alfio and
David in
L'amico Fritz), Giordano (
Gerard in
Andrea Chénier), Mozart (Don Giovanni and
Figaro) and
Wagner (
Wolfram, Telramund and even, on occasion,
Hans Sachs). He appeared, too, in
French operas written by
Meyerbeer,
Gounod,
Bizet and, as we have seen, Massenet, performing such parts as
Nevers, Hoël, Scindia, Escamillo, Zurga and
Valentin.