Tenors

Ferruccio Tagliavini

Ferruccio TagliaviniThis fine tenor really requires very little introduction. He made his debut as Rodolfo in La Boheme, in 1938 and career took a serious delay due to the second world war, wher work was anywhere he could find it. He made his La Scala debut in 1942 and US troops returning home after the war and talking about him, no doubt aided his career in the US, where he again sang Rodolfo in Chicago in 1946. He made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 1946 and became a great favourite throughout America. He appeared in London in 1950 and became a great favourite of British TV audiences throughout the fifties. In his early career, Tagliavini’s voice was a sweet, haunting sound with easy access to top notes but he succumbed to the lure of the heavier tenor repertory (and no doubt, to the cash associated with them) and his voice darkened and became less flexible as a result of an increasingly more dramatic approach to singing.