Giulio Gari
Encyclopedia
Giulio Gari was a versatile and internationally known tenor who performed on both the opera and concert stages. He sang more than fifty-five lyric and dramatic roles. He performed with the New York City Opera
from 1945 to 1952 and with the Metropolitan Opera
from 1953 to 1961.
, Austria-Hungary
(now Mediaş
, Romania), the youngest of a family of ten children. He gained recognition as a child singing in operetta throughout Romania and Hungary. He studied with the celebrated Viennese soprano Lotte Gelinek and later at the Verdi Conservatory in Milan
.
as Almaviva in Gioachino Rossini's Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville
) under the baton of the legendary Tullio Serafin
.
Soon after, he secured a National Broadcasting Company
contract singing weekly with the NBC Symphony Orchestra and performing on the NBC Radio show, "Musical Bits", with Phil Spitalny
conducting.
In 1939 he sang at the St Louis Opera in the American premiere of Gian Carlo Menotti
's Amelia Goes to the Ball, beginning his long association with Maestro Laszlo Halasz
, the founder of the New York City Opera.
He served in the American armed forces during World War II as an infantryman with the Eighth Motorized Division, which served in Germany.
In 1945 he made his official debut with a leading American opera company when he appeared at the New York City Opera for the first time as the Steersman in Richard Wagner
's Der fliegende Holländer. Composer Virgil Thomson
, then music critic of the New York Herald Tribune
, wrote "the vocal treat of the evening was Giulio Gari, who sang with beauty of voice, easy command of the heroic style and no hesitancy about the high notes."
He wed Lela Mae Flynn in New York Ciy on Oct. 29, 1946.
Gari toured Latin America and the Caribbean garnering ecstatic reviews, particularly in 1946 when he sang in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with the Havana Symphony Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski
. In Central America he performed with Gladys Swarthout
and in Guatemala
participated in the first opera season there in twenty years.
On January 6, 1953, Gari made his debut with the Metropolitan Opera singing Pinkerton to the Butterfly of the renowned Licia Albanese
. New York Times critic Howard Taubman
praised "his fine voice...fine style...skill and polish" and predicted a luminous future for the debutant.
wrote of his Rodolfo in La Boheme
that it provided "the most distinguished vocalism of the evening, he showed sensitivity and marked refinement of style, climactic and exciting." Similar critical adulation was expressed for his work in such roles as the Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto
and Calaf in Turandot
.
His versatility, preparedness, and stamina were legendary. When he performed both Turiddu in Cavalleria Rusticana
and Canio in Pagliacci
, rarely ever attempted, the New York Times lauded him for singing both parts "with their different tessitura
and their severe demands on an artist's vocal and histrionic endurance", and for delivering each "with remarkable control of his fine voice and an unusual depth of human feeling. That same evening he went on to sing Don Jose in Carmen
.
Gari could always be counted on to appear whenever occasion demanded and to deliver superb performances, even when he was singing a regular 32-week schedule. Once during the Metropolitan Opera's annual seven-week tour he was flown to Boston
to sing his first Don Carlo in a performance hailed as "sterling." He also astounded everyone when he made last-minute appearances as the Duke in Rigoletto, Don Jose in Carmen, and Dimitry in Boris Godunov
, on three successive nights.
Gari also appeared frequently as a guest artist. He sang in a movie version of Verdi's La Traviata
. He performed in Kodály's Psalmus Hungaricus at Carnegie Hall
, and in the American premiere of Ildebrando Pizzetti
's L’Assassinio nella Cattedrale at the Empire State Music Festival.
. In 1970 he joined the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music
in Philadelphia. In 1974 he began teaching at Temple University
. During this time, he also maintained his private voice studio in Manhattan and served as Cantor at Temple Sinai in Forest Hills, New York.
In 2002 his widow Gloria Gari established a foundation to honor Giulio Gari. It holds a vocal competition annually in New York City.
New York City Opera
The New York City Opera is an American opera company located in New York City.The company, called "the people's opera" by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was founded in 1943 with the aim of making opera financially accessible to a wide audience, producing an innovative choice of repertory, and...
from 1945 to 1952 and with the Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
from 1953 to 1961.
Early life
Gari was born Samu Gyula in 1909 in MediaschMedias
Mediaș is the second largest city in Sibiu County, Transylvania, Romania.-Geographic location:Mediaș is located in the middle basin of Târnava Mare River, at 39 km from Sighișoara and 41 km from Blaj. The health resort Bazna, officially recognized for the first time in 1302, is...
, Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
(now Mediaş
Medias
Mediaș is the second largest city in Sibiu County, Transylvania, Romania.-Geographic location:Mediaș is located in the middle basin of Târnava Mare River, at 39 km from Sighișoara and 41 km from Blaj. The health resort Bazna, officially recognized for the first time in 1302, is...
, Romania), the youngest of a family of ten children. He gained recognition as a child singing in operetta throughout Romania and Hungary. He studied with the celebrated Viennese soprano Lotte Gelinek and later at the Verdi Conservatory 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 ,...
.
Career
In 1938 he made his operatic debut at Rome's Teatro Reale dell’Opera, when he substituted for Tito SchipaTito Schipa
Tito Schipa was an Italian tenor. He is considered one of the finest tenori di grazia in operatic history...
as Almaviva in Gioachino Rossini's Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville
The Barber of Seville
The Barber of Seville, or The Futile Precaution is an opera buffa in two acts by Gioachino Rossini with a libretto by Cesare Sterbini. The libretto was based on Pierre Beaumarchais's comedy Le Barbier de Séville , which was originally an opéra comique, or a mixture of spoken play with music...
) under the baton of the legendary Tullio Serafin
Tullio Serafin
-Biography:Tullio Serafin was a leading Italian opera conductor with a long career and a very broad repertoire who revived many 19th century bel canto operas by Bellini, Rossini and Donizetti to become staples of 20th century repertoire...
.
Soon after, he secured a National Broadcasting Company
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
contract singing weekly with the NBC Symphony Orchestra and performing on the NBC Radio show, "Musical Bits", with Phil Spitalny
Phil Spitalny
Phil Spitalny was a musician, music critic, composer and bandleader heard often on radio during the 1930s and 1940s...
conducting.
In 1939 he sang at the St Louis Opera in the American premiere of Gian Carlo Menotti
Gian Carlo Menotti
Gian Carlo Menotti was an Italian-American composer and librettist. Although he often referred to himself as an American composer, he kept his Italian citizenship. He wrote the classic Christmas opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, among about two dozen other operas intended to appeal to popular...
's Amelia Goes to the Ball, beginning his long association with Maestro Laszlo Halasz
Laszlo Halasz
Laszlo Halasz was an American opera director, conductor, and pianist of Hungarian birth. In 1943 he was appointed the first director of the New York City Opera; a position he held through 1951...
, the founder of the New York City Opera.
He served in the American armed forces during World War II as an infantryman with the Eighth Motorized Division, which served in Germany.
In 1945 he made his official debut with a leading American opera company when he appeared at the New York City Opera for the first time as the Steersman in Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
's Der fliegende Holländer. Composer Virgil Thomson
Virgil Thomson
Virgil Thomson was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music...
, then music critic of the New York Herald Tribune
New York Herald Tribune
The New York Herald Tribune was a daily newspaper created in 1924 when the New York Tribune acquired the New York Herald.Other predecessors, which had earlier merged into the New York Tribune, included the original The New Yorker newsweekly , and the Whig Party's Log Cabin.The paper was home to...
, wrote "the vocal treat of the evening was Giulio Gari, who sang with beauty of voice, easy command of the heroic style and no hesitancy about the high notes."
He wed Lela Mae Flynn in New York Ciy on Oct. 29, 1946.
Gari toured Latin America and the Caribbean garnering ecstatic reviews, particularly in 1946 when he sang in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with the Havana Symphony Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Anthony Stokowski was a British-born, naturalised American orchestral conductor, well known for his free-hand performing style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from many of the great orchestras he conducted.In America, Stokowski...
. In Central America he performed with Gladys Swarthout
Gladys Swarthout
Gladys Swarthout was an American mezzo-soprano opera singer.-Career:...
and in Guatemala
Guatemala
Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...
participated in the first opera season there in twenty years.
On January 6, 1953, Gari made his debut with the Metropolitan Opera singing Pinkerton to the Butterfly of the renowned Licia Albanese
Licia Albanese
Licia Albanese is an Italian-born American operatic soprano. Noted especially for her portrayals of the lyric heroines of Verdi and Puccini, Albanese was a leading artist with the Metropolitan Opera of New York from 1940 to 1966...
. New York Times critic Howard Taubman
Howard Taubman
Hyman Howard Taubman was an American music critic, theater critic, and author.-Biography:Born in Manhattan, Taubman attended DeWitt Clinton High School and then won a four-year scholarship to Cornell University, from which he graduated, as a Phi Beta Kappa member, in 1929.He then returned to New...
praised "his fine voice...fine style...skill and polish" and predicted a luminous future for the debutant.
Reaction
Gari garnered superlative reviews throughout his career. Noel Strauss of The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
wrote of his Rodolfo in La Boheme
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...
that it provided "the most distinguished vocalism of the evening, he showed sensitivity and marked refinement of style, climactic and exciting." Similar critical adulation was expressed for his work in such roles as the Duke of Mantua in 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...
and Calaf in Turandot
Turandot
Turandot is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, set to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni.Though Puccini's first interest in the subject was based on his reading of Friedrich Schiller's adaptation of the play, his work is most nearly based on the earlier text Turandot...
.
His versatility, preparedness, and stamina were legendary. When he performed both Turiddu in Cavalleria Rusticana
Cavalleria rusticana
Cavalleria rusticana is an opera in one act by Pietro Mascagni to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci, adapted from a play written by Giovanni Verga based on his short story. Considered one of the classic verismo operas, it premiered on May 17, 1890 at the Teatro...
and Canio in Pagliacci
Pagliacci
Pagliacci , sometimes incorrectly rendered with a definite article as I Pagliacci, is an opera consisting of a prologue and two acts written and composed by Ruggero Leoncavallo. It recounts the tragedy of a jealous husband in a commedia dell'arte troupe...
, rarely ever attempted, the New York Times lauded him for singing both parts "with their different tessitura
Tessitura
In music, the term tessitura generally describes the most musically acceptable and comfortable range for a given singer or, less frequently, musical instrument; the range in which a given type of voice presents its best-sounding texture or timbre...
and their severe demands on an artist's vocal and histrionic endurance", and for delivering each "with remarkable control of his fine voice and an unusual depth of human feeling. That same evening he went on to sing Don Jose in Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...
.
Gari could always be counted on to appear whenever occasion demanded and to deliver superb performances, even when he was singing a regular 32-week schedule. Once during the Metropolitan Opera's annual seven-week tour he was flown to Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
to sing his first Don Carlo in a performance hailed as "sterling." He also astounded everyone when he made last-minute appearances as the Duke in Rigoletto, Don Jose in Carmen, and Dimitry in Boris Godunov
Boris Godunov (opera)
Boris Godunov is an opera by Modest Mussorgsky . The work was composed between 1868 and 1873 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is Mussorgsky's only completed opera and is considered his masterpiece. Its subjects are the Russian ruler Boris Godunov, who reigned as Tsar during the Time of Troubles,...
, on three successive nights.
Gari also appeared frequently as a guest artist. He sang in a movie version of 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...
. He performed in Kodály's Psalmus Hungaricus at Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
, and in the American premiere of Ildebrando Pizzetti
Ildebrando Pizzetti
Ildebrando Pizzetti was an Italian composer of classical music.- Biography :Pizzetti was born in Parma in 1880. He was part of the "Generation of 1880" along with Ottorino Respighi and Gian Francesco Malipiero. They were among the first Italian composers in some time whose primary contributions...
's L’Assassinio nella Cattedrale at the Empire State Music Festival.
Retirement
Gari retired from the Metropolitan in 1961. In 1964 he became director of the Voice Department of the Long Island Institute of Music. He also taught voice at Lehigh UniversityLehigh University
Lehigh University is a private, co-educational university located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in the Lehigh Valley region of the United States. It was established in 1865 by Asa Packer as a four-year technical school, but has grown to include studies in a wide variety of disciplines...
. In 1970 he joined the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music
Curtis Institute of Music
The Curtis Institute of Music is a conservatory in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that offers courses of study leading to a performance Diploma, Bachelor of Music, Master of Music in Opera, and Professional Studies Certificate in Opera. According to statistics compiled by U.S...
in Philadelphia. In 1974 he began teaching at Temple University
Temple University
Temple University is a comprehensive public research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Originally founded in 1884 by Dr. Russell Conwell, Temple University is among the nation's largest providers of professional education and prepares the largest body of professional...
. During this time, he also maintained his private voice studio in Manhattan and served as Cantor at Temple Sinai in Forest Hills, New York.
In 2002 his widow Gloria Gari established a foundation to honor Giulio Gari. It holds a vocal competition annually in New York City.