Beniamino Gigli, (March 20, 1890 - November 30, 1957) was an Italian opera singer. The most famous tenor of his generation, he was renowned internationally for the great beauty of his voice and the soundness of his vocal technique. Critics sometimes took him to task, however, for what was perceived to be the over-emotionalism of his interpretations. Nevertheless, such was Gigli's talent that he is considered to be one of the very finest tenors in the recorded history of music.
Gigli was born in
RecanatiRecanati is a town and commune in the province of Macerata, Marche region of Italy. Recanati was founded around 1150 AD from three pre-existing castles. In 1290 it proclaimed itself an independent republic and, in the 15th century, was famous for its international fair...
, in the
MarcheThe Marche is one of the 20 Regions of Italy...
, the son of a shoe-maker who loved opera.
In 1914, he won first prize in an international singing competition in
ParmaParma is a city in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna famous for its architecture and the fine countryside around it. It is the home of the University of Parma, one of the oldest universities in the world....
.
Beniamino Gigli, (March 20, 1890 - November 30, 1957) was an Italian opera singer. The most famous tenor of his generation, he was renowned internationally for the great beauty of his voice and the soundness of his vocal technique. Critics sometimes took him to task, however, for what was perceived to be the over-emotionalism of his interpretations. Nevertheless, such was Gigli's talent that he is considered to be one of the very finest tenors in the recorded history of music.
Biography
Gigli was born in
RecanatiRecanati is a town and commune in the province of Macerata, Marche region of Italy. Recanati was founded around 1150 AD from three pre-existing castles. In 1290 it proclaimed itself an independent republic and, in the 15th century, was famous for its international fair...
, in the
MarcheThe Marche is one of the 20 Regions of Italy...
, the son of a shoe-maker who loved opera.
In 1914, he won first prize in an international singing competition in
ParmaParma is a city in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna famous for its architecture and the fine countryside around it. It is the home of the University of Parma, one of the oldest universities in the world....
. His
operaOpera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score. Opera is part of the Western classical music tradition. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
tic debut came on October 15, 1914 when he played Enzo in
Amilcare PonchielliAmilcare Ponchielli was an Italian composer, largely of operas.-Biography:Born in Paderno Fasolaro, now Paderno Ponchielli, near Cremona, Ponchielli won a scholarship at the age of nine to study music at the Milan Conservatory, writing his first symphony by the time he was ten years old.Two years...
's
La GiocondaLa Gioconda is an opera in four acts by Amilcare Ponchielli to an Italian libretto by Arrigo Boito, based on Angelo, tyran de Padoue, a play in prose by Victor Hugo, dating from 1835....
in
RovigoRovigo is a town in the Veneto region of North-Eastern Italy, the capital of the eponymous province. -Geography:...
, following which he was in great demand.
Gigli made many important debuts in quick succession, and always in
Mefistofele: Teatro Massimo di Palermo (March 31, 1915), Teatro San Carlo di Napoli (December 26, 1915), Teatro Costanzi di Roma (December 26, 1916), La Scala (November 19, 1918), and finally the Metropolitan (November 26, 1920). (Two other great Italian tenors on the roster of the Met during the 1920s were also Gigli's chief rivals,
Giovanni MartinelliGiovanni Martinelli was a celebrated Italian operatic tenor. He was particularly associated with the Italian lyric-dramatic repertory, although he performed French operatic roles to great acclaim as well...
and
Giacomo Lauri-VolpiGiacomo Lauri-Volpi was an Italian tenor with a lyric-dramatic voice of exceptional range and technical facility. He performed throughout Europe and the Americas in a top-class career that spanned 40 years....
.)
Some of the roles with which Gigli became particularly associated during this period included Edgardo in Donizetti's
Lucia di LammermoorLucia di Lammermoor is a dramma tragico in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Salvadore Cammarano wrote the Italian libretto loosely based upon Sir Walter Scott's historical novel The Bride of Lammermoor....
, Rodolfo in
Giacomo PucciniGiacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire...
's
La BohèmeLa bohème is an opera in four acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger. The world première performance of La bohème was in Turin on February 1, 1896 at the Teatro Regio and conducted by the young Arturo...
and the title role in
Umberto GiordanoUmberto Menotti Maria Giordano was an Italian composer, mainly of operas.He was born in Foggia in Puglia, southern Italy, and studied under Paolo Serrao at the Conservatoire of Naples...
's
Andrea ChénierAndrea Chénier is an opera in four acts by the verismo composer Umberto Giordano, set to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica. It is based loosely on the life of the French poet, André Chénier , who was executed during the French Revolution....
, both of which he would later record in full.
Gigli rose to true international prominence after the death of the great Italian tenor
Enrico CarusoEnrico Caruso was an Italian tenor who sang to acclaim at the major opera houses of Europe and North and South America...
in 1921. Such was his popularity with audiences he was often called "Caruso Secondo", though he much preferred to be known as "Gigli Primo." In fact, the comparison was not valid as Caruso had a bigger, darker, more heroic voice than Gigli's honey-toned lyric instrument.
Gigli left the Met in 1932, ostensibly after refusing to take a pay cut.
Giulio Gatti-CasazzaGiulio Gatti-Casazza was an Italian opera manager. He was general manager of La Scala in Milan, Italy and later the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.-Biography:...
, the Met's then general manager, was furious at his company's most popular male singer; he told the press that Gigli was the only singer not to accept the pay cut. There were in fact several others,
Lily PonsLily Pons was a French-American coloratura soprano.-Biography:Born as Alice "Lili" Joséphine Pons in Draguignan near Cannes, Pons first studied piano at the Paris Conservatory, winning the First Prize at the age of 15...
and
Rosa PonselleRosa Ponselle , was an American operatic soprano. She sang mainly at the New York Metropolitan Opera and is generally considered by music critics to have been one of the greatest sopranos of the past 100 years....
among them; and it is well-documented that Gatti-Casazza gave himself a large pay increase in 1931, so that after the pay cut in 1932 his salary remained the same as it had been originally. Furthermore, Gatti was careful to hide Gigli's counter offer to the press, in which the singer offered to sing five or six concerts gratis, which in dollars saved was worth more than Gatti's imposed pay cut.
After leaving the Met, Gigli returned again to Italy, and sang in houses there, elsewhere in Europe, and in South America. He was criticized for being a favorite singer of the Italian dictator
Benito MussoliniBenito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini,
KSMOM GCTE was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism. He became the Prime Minister of Italy in 1922 and began using the title Il Duce by...
, and toward the end of World War II was able to give few performances. However he immediately returned to the stage when the war ended in 1945, and the audience acclaim was greater and more clamorous than ever.
In the last few years of his life, Gigli gave concert performances more often than he appeared on stage. Before his retirement in 1955, Gigli undertook an exhausting world tour of Farewell Concerts. This impaired his health in the two years that remained to him, during which time he helped prepare his Memoirs (based primarily on an earlier Memoir, fleshed out by a series of interviews). Gigli died in Rome in 1957.
Personal life
Like many artists, Gigli was a man of contradictions. On the one hand, he gave more fund raising concerts and raised more money than any other singer in history, with close to one thousand benefit concerts. He was deeply devoted to Padre Pio, his confessor, to whom he donated a large amount of money. Also, Gigli sang an unusual amount of sacred music (especially in the 1950s), atypical of a leading operatic tenor. Additionally, he was throughout his life deeply devoted to the sacred music of Don Lorenzo Perosi.
On the other hand, Gigli's relationships with women were often tainted by scandal. He lied in his memoirs, saying that he was married six months earlier than he really was. This was to conceal that his wife Costanza was pregnant before reaching the altar. Gigli had two children with Costanza: Enzo and Rina. (The latter was a well-known soprano in her own right.) Later, Gigli is well-known to have had a second family with Lucia Vigarani, producing three children. Gigli is rumored to have had at least three other children with as many different women. Gigli's exact number of offspring will probably never be known.
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