Giovanni Malipiero
Encyclopedia
Giovanni Malipiero was an opera
tic tenor
who enjoyed a prominent career on stage and on radio in his native Italy during the 1930s and '40s.
, Italy, where he also studied singing. Lonigo
, near Vicenza
, was the scene of his professional debut in 1930, as the Duke of Mantua in Verdi's Rigoletto
. The following year he sang the same role at the Teatro Ponchielli in Cremona
. This performance marked the true start of his career as a leading artist.
The fine quality of Malipiero's lyric
voice soon attracted the attention of impresarios, and he was invited to sing at principal venues throughout Italy, including the Teatro Costanzi in Rome, La Fenice
in Venice
and the Verona Arena
. Other major Italian cities that heard him sing were Naples
, Parma
, Turin
and Genoa
, and he travelled also to Monaco.
In 1937, he made the first of what would prove to be many appearances at Italy's foremost opera house, the Teatro alla Scala in Milan
, as Ramiro in Rossini's La cenerentola
. Nine years later, following World War II
, he took part in an historic concert held to mark the re-opening of La Scala, performing under the baton of Arturo Toscanini
.
Much admired in parts written by the bel canto
composers Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini
, Malipiero was also acclaimed for his performances in Verdi's La traviata
, Falstaff
and Rigoletto. Other Italian operas in which he sang with considerable successes included Puccini's La bohème
, Manon Lescaut
and Gianni Schicchi
, and Boito's Mefistofele
. He did not ignore French music, either. During the 1930s and '40s he appeared, for instance, in Offenbach
's Les Contes d'Hoffmann
, Gounod's Faust
, and Massenet's Werther
and Le jongleur de Notre-Dame
.
The political turmoil of the late 1930s, culminating in the outbreak of the six-year-long Second World War, restricted Malipiero's opportunities to establish an international career. He was said to have disliked overseas travel, too, although he did accept engagements to sing in South America. His schedule of performances wound down in the 1950s and he began to assume character parts from the middle of that decade onwards. He retired in 1962 after a final appearance at the Teatro San Carlo, Naples.
Malipiero possessed a clear, bright, well-trained voice with a slightly husky timbre. Italian music critics and audiences of the 1930-1960 period praised his singing style, regarding it as belonging to the elegant 'old school' of pre-verismo
vocalism.
He can be heard as Edgardo in a complete recording of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor
, with the coloratura soprano
Lina Pagliughi
in the title role and Ugo Tansini conducting, that was made by Cetra Records at the height of the tenor's powers in 1939. This performance was remastered in 2001 and released on CD by Naxos Records. In 2009, the Preiser label issued a CD devoted to Malipiero. It contains a selection of arias, ranging in compositional date from the bel canto era through to the verismo period, that he recorded in Italy between 1937 and 1941.
Malipiero died 10 days short of his 64th birthday, in Padua.
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
tic tenor
Tenor
The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
who enjoyed a prominent career on stage and on radio in his native Italy during the 1930s and '40s.
Career and recorded legacy
Malipiero was born in PaduaPadua
Padua is a city and comune in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 . The city is sometimes included, with Venice and Treviso, in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, having...
, Italy, where he also studied singing. Lonigo
Lonigo
Lonigo is a town and comune in the province of Vicenza, Veneto, northern Italy, its population counts around 16.000 inhabitants.In its frazione of Bagnolo is the Villa Pisani, a Renaissance patrician villa designed by Andrea Palladio, which is part of a World Heritage Site...
, near Vicenza
Vicenza
Vicenza , a city in north-eastern Italy, is the capital of the eponymous province in the Veneto region, at the northern base of the Monte Berico, straddling the Bacchiglione...
, was the scene of his professional debut in 1930, as the Duke of Mantua in Verdi's Rigoletto
Rigoletto
Rigoletto is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on the play Le roi s'amuse by Victor Hugo. It was first performed at La Fenice in Venice on March 11, 1851...
. The following year he sang the same role at the Teatro Ponchielli in Cremona
Cremona
Cremona is a city and comune in northern Italy, situated in Lombardy, on the left bank of the Po River in the middle of the Pianura Padana . It is the capital of the province of Cremona and the seat of the local City and Province governments...
. This performance marked the true start of his career as a leading artist.
The fine quality of Malipiero's lyric
Vocal weight
Vocal weight refers to the perceived "lightness" or "heaviness" of a singing voice. This quality of the voice is one of the major determining factors in voice classification within classical music...
voice soon attracted the attention of impresarios, and he was invited to sing at principal venues throughout Italy, including the Teatro Costanzi in Rome, La Fenice
La Fenice
Teatro La Fenice is an opera house in Venice, Italy. It is one of the most famous theatres in Europe, the site of many famous operatic premieres. Its name reflects its role in permitting an opera company to "rise from the ashes" despite losing the use of two theatres...
in Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
and the Verona Arena
Verona Arena
The Verona Arena is a Roman amphitheatre in Piazza Bra in Verona, Italy, which is internationally famous for the large-scale opera performances given there. It is one of the best preserved ancient structures of its kind....
. Other major Italian cities that heard him sing were Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
, Parma
Parma
Parma is a city in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna famous for its ham, its cheese, its architecture and the fine countryside around it. This is the home of the University of Parma, one of the oldest universities in the world....
, Turin
Turin
Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...
and Genoa
Genoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....
, and he travelled also to Monaco.
In 1937, he made the first of what would prove to be many appearances at Italy's foremost opera house, the Teatro alla Scala in Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
, as Ramiro in Rossini's La cenerentola
La Cenerentola
La Cenerentola, ossia La bontà in trionfo is an operatic dramma giocoso in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. The libretto was written by Jacopo Ferretti, based on the fairy tale Cinderella...
. Nine years later, following World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, he took part in an historic concert held to mark the re-opening of La Scala, performing under the baton of Arturo Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini was an Italian conductor. One of the most acclaimed musicians of the late 19th and 20th century, he was renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his photographic memory...
.
Much admired in parts written by the bel canto
Bel canto
Bel canto , along with a number of similar constructions , is an Italian opera term...
composers Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini
Vincenzo Bellini
Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini was an Italian opera composer. His greatest works are I Capuleti ed i Montecchi , La sonnambula , Norma , Beatrice di Tenda , and I puritani...
, Malipiero was also acclaimed for his performances in Verdi's La traviata
La traviata
La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias , a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman...
, Falstaff
Falstaff (opera)
Falstaff is an operatic commedia lirica in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, adapted by Arrigo Boito from Shakespeare's plays The Merry Wives of Windsor and scenes from Henry IV. It was Verdi's last opera, written in the composer's ninth decade, and only the second of his 26 operas to be a comedy...
and Rigoletto. Other Italian operas in which he sang with considerable successes included Puccini's La bohème
La bohème
La bohème is an opera in four acts,Puccini called the divisions quadro, a tableau or "image", rather than atto . by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger...
, Manon Lescaut
Manon Lescaut
Manon Lescaut is a short novel by French author Abbé Prévost. Published in 1731, it is the seventh and final volume of Mémoires et aventures d'un homme de qualité . It was controversial in its time and was banned in France upon publication...
and Gianni Schicchi
Gianni Schicchi
Gianni Schicchi is a comic opera in one act by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Giovacchino Forzano, composed in 1917–18. The libretto is based on an incident mentioned in Dante's Divine Comedy. The work is the third and final part of Puccini's Il trittico —three one-act operas with...
, and Boito's Mefistofele
Mefistofele
Mefistofele is an opera in a prologue, four acts and an epilogue, the only completed opera by the Italian composer-librettist Arrigo Boito.-Composition history:...
. He did not ignore French music, either. During the 1930s and '40s he appeared, for instance, in Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....
's Les Contes d'Hoffmann
Les contes d'Hoffmann
Les contes d'Hoffmann is an opéra by Jacques Offenbach. The French libretto was written by Jules Barbier, based on short stories by E. T. A...
, Gounod's Faust
Faust (opera)
Faust is a drame lyrique in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré from Carré's play Faust et Marguerite, in turn loosely based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust, Part 1...
, and Massenet's Werther
Werther
Werther is an opera in four acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Édouard Blau, Paul Milliet and Georges Hartmann based on the German epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe....
and Le jongleur de Notre-Dame
Le jongleur de Notre-Dame
Le jongleur de Notre-Dame is an opera in three acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Maurice Léna. It was first performed in Monte Carlo on 18 February 1902.-History:...
.
The political turmoil of the late 1930s, culminating in the outbreak of the six-year-long Second World War, restricted Malipiero's opportunities to establish an international career. He was said to have disliked overseas travel, too, although he did accept engagements to sing in South America. His schedule of performances wound down in the 1950s and he began to assume character parts from the middle of that decade onwards. He retired in 1962 after a final appearance at the Teatro San Carlo, Naples.
Malipiero possessed a clear, bright, well-trained voice with a slightly husky timbre. Italian music critics and audiences of the 1930-1960 period praised his singing style, regarding it as belonging to the elegant 'old school' of pre-verismo
Verismo
Verismo was an Italian literary movement which peaked between approximately 1875 and the early 1900s....
vocalism.
He can be heard as Edgardo in a complete recording of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor
Lucia di Lammermoor
Lucia di Lammermoor is a dramma tragico in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Salvadore Cammarano wrote the Italian language libretto loosely based upon Sir Walter Scott's historical novel The Bride of Lammermoor....
, with the coloratura soprano
Coloratura soprano
A coloratura soprano is a type of operatic soprano who specializes in music that is distinguished by agile runs and leaps. The term coloratura refers to the elaborate ornamentation of a melody, which is a typical component of the music written for this voice...
Lina Pagliughi
Lina Pagliughi
Lina Pagliughi was an Italian-American opera singer. Based in Italy for the majority of her career, she made a number of recordings and established herself as one of the world's finest lyric coloratura sopranos of the 1930s and '40s.-Career:Pagliughi was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Italian...
in the title role and Ugo Tansini conducting, that was made by Cetra Records at the height of the tenor's powers in 1939. This performance was remastered in 2001 and released on CD by Naxos Records. In 2009, the Preiser label issued a CD devoted to Malipiero. It contains a selection of arias, ranging in compositional date from the bel canto era through to the verismo period, that he recorded in Italy between 1937 and 1941.
Malipiero died 10 days short of his 64th birthday, in Padua.
Sources
- Grove Music Online, J.B. SteaneJ.B. SteaneJohn Barry Steane was an English music critic, musicologist, literary scholar and teacher, with a particular interest in singing and the human voice...
, Oxford University Press, April 2008.