Sicilian
tenor Giuseppe Anselmi was born in 1876, and achieved a great reputation
throughout Europe in the early years of the twentieth century. He was also quite popular in St. Petersburg,
at the Mariinski, and he also sang in
Warsaw. Unlike some other singers of his
era, he never came to the United States, possibly because Caruso had debuted
here in 1903, and was, virtually from the beginning, a very popular tenor,
actually one of the first superstars of opera.
That was a matter of small consequence, however, because Anselmi was an
entirely different kind of tenor, one more characteristic of the 19th
than the twentieth century. He was at
least something of a bel canto tenor, in
the same approximate school as Alessandro Bonci.
He had a
very good career in Europe, and the basis of his fame was the elegance of his
singing. His predilection for bel
canto—while not reflected so much in his repertoire choice –made possible some
very refined singing, and opened the door for older works. He sang the bigger Italian roles quite
consistently (Canio, Turridu,Cavaradossi,Il Duca, for example), so while some might loosely call him a "bel
canto" tenor, that did not rule out for him the heavier Italian
roles. The divisions between voice types
and roles barely existed at that time, and singers often sang a very wide
repertoire. Anselmi sang Ottavio and
Almaviva as well as Canio and Turridu, and would also sing Handel and Richard
Strauss. He even recorded one song in Russian.
Anselmi's
reputation for elegance came not only from his bel canto training and his
linguistic abilities; he was an excellent musician, having studied both piano
and violin at the Naples Conservatory as a young man. His debut was in Genoa, in 1900, when he was
very young indeed, and he quickly became popular. His next move, the following year, was to
Covent Garden, and subsequent debuts at San Carlo, La Scala, Monte Carlo came
quickly. From there, it was Brussels,
Germany, Vienna, St. Petersburg, Poland and Spain; everywhere a success. While
he did not travel to North America, he did travel to South America, and sang at the Colón in Buenos Aires. He was not
in very robust health, it seems, and by 1910, he was waning, and, sadly, died
of tuberculosis in 1929, only 53 years of age.
While
Anselmi sang a lot of the "bread and butter" Italian roles, he was no
stranger to more modern and more refined music, witness this recording of R.
Strauss' "Morgen":
I think
you will agree that this is beautiful and musically elegant. This is not a "trendy" or
"occasional" thing that he was doing.
His singing reveals both an understanding of and control over the style of the song.
Here is an
example of bel canto training as reflected
in his handling of Loris' famous aria from Fedora. We are used to hearing this done by some very
robust tenors, but this is another approach to the song that works very well:
How about
that!? Talk about elegance and bel canto
technique! That is absolutely beautiful
singing, and the stylistics and musicality are inspiring. It is not hard to see why he was revered
throughout Europe. That kind of singing
is close to being a lost art among tenors.
Here is an
Anselmi rarity. He recorded a soprano
aria from Handel's Xerxes, "Va godendo," only recently posted. This is a real treat:
Finally,
and I present this because it is linguistically very rare, a recording of an Italian tenor singing in
Russian. I suspect, as I point out in
the description I put on this video when I posted it, that this is something he learned in
St.Petersburg, where he was exceptionally popular: (I wrote the first half of the description on
this video in Russian, for my Russian audience, but scroll down a bit, I also
posted it in English.):
An unusual
tenor, a golden age, and arts now largely lost, but there is always the
possibility of recovering the essence of the lost arts, if not the actual
techniques.
