Antonio Cotogni
Encyclopedia
Antonio Cotogni was an Italian baritone
of the first magnitude. Regarded internationally as being one of the greatest male opera
singers of the 19th century, he was particularly admired by the composer Giuseppe Verdi
. Cotogni forged an important second career as a singing teacher after his retirement from the stage in 1898.
, Cotogni was of humble origins. He studied first at the Hospice of San Michele, and afterwards under Faldi, Capocci, Mustafà and Aldega, gaining his first success in the Oratory of the Filippini in the Chiesa Nuova. He also studied with Fontemaggi. He made his debut at Rome's Teatro Metastasio, as Belcore in L'elisir d'amore
, in 1852. He sang successfully on the Italian operatic circuit before reaching La Scala
, Milan, in 1860. During the ensuing decades, he also appeared at the leading opera houses in Madrid, Lisbon, Paris, London, Moscow and St Petersburg. He became enormously popular with London audiences, performing at the Royal Opera House
, Covent Garden
, from 1867 to 1889. He sang at St Petersburg in 26 successive seasons.
Cotogni was an especial favorite of Verdi's, who praised him for the beauty, warmth and strength of his voice, as well as for the emotional intensity which he brought to his musical interpretations. He sang most of the major Verdi baritone roles and took part in the first Italian staging of Don Carlo, in Bologna
in 1867, under the supervision of the composer. But his operatic triumphs were not confined to Verdi's compositions. He was also a brilliant exponent of the elegant but technically demanding bel canto
music of Gaetano Donizetti
and Vincenzo Bellini
.
Cotogni retired from the operatic stage in February 1898, having sung an estimated 127 (some sources say 157) roles. They ranged from the major parts in Mozart's Italian operas through to what were, from Cotogni's perspective, cutting-edge modern parts in such verismo
works as Pagliacci
and Manon Lescaut
. His interpretations of the lead baritone characters in Un ballo in maschera
, Ernani
, Linda di Chamounix
, Faust
, L'elisir d'amore
and Il barbiere di Siviglia were especially admired. Cotogni's final appearance was as Don Pasquale
in Donizetti's comic opera of the same name.
In retirement, Cotogni became one of the most celebrated vocal teachers in history. He taught briefly in St Petersburg (at the invitation of Anton Rubinstein
) but he had to abandon this post in consequence of a serious illness, subsequently taking up an appointment in 1902 as a professor at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome. Here he founded what became known as the "Roman School of Singing". Among those who studied under him during this period were the world famous tenors Beniamino Gigli
and Giacomo Lauri-Volpi
and the leading baritones Mario Basiola, Benvenuto Franci and Mariano Stabile
. Two other star singers, Jean de Reszke
and Mattia Battistini
, consulted him as well.
Cotogni ranks with his contemporaries Francesco Graziani
, Jean-Baptiste Faure
and Sir Charles Santley
as the foremost baritone of his star-studded generation. He "had a very brief and scarcely revealing relationship with the gramophone
; at the age of 77 ... with the tenor Francesco Marconi
, he recorded [the] duet 'I Mulatieri'", writes Michael Scott. "Not surprisingly Marconi gets the better of it. Still, however difficult it is to make out Cotogni's contribution, it is all we have left of a singer who for over 40 years dominated the stages in London, Madrid and Lisbon, St Petersburg and Moscow and throughout Italy."
Cotogni died of old age in Rome less than a month prior to the 1918 armistice which ended World War I.
Baritone
Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...
of the first magnitude. Regarded internationally as being one of the greatest male opera
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...
singers of the 19th century, he was particularly admired by the composer Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...
. Cotogni forged an important second career as a singing teacher after his retirement from the stage in 1898.
Life and career
A native of RomeRome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, Cotogni was of humble origins. He studied first at the Hospice of San Michele, and afterwards under Faldi, Capocci, Mustafà and Aldega, gaining his first success in the Oratory of the Filippini in the Chiesa Nuova. He also studied with Fontemaggi. He made his debut at Rome's Teatro Metastasio, as Belcore in L'elisir d'amore
L'elisir d'amore
L'elisir d'amore is an opera by the Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti. It is a melodramma giocoso in two acts...
, in 1852. He sang successfully on the Italian operatic circuit before reaching La Scala
La Scala
La Scala , is a world renowned opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the New Royal-Ducal Theatre at La Scala...
, Milan, in 1860. During the ensuing decades, he also appeared at the leading opera houses in Madrid, Lisbon, Paris, London, Moscow and St Petersburg. He became enormously popular with London audiences, performing at the Royal Opera House
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...
, Covent Garden
Covent Garden
Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...
, from 1867 to 1889. He sang at St Petersburg in 26 successive seasons.
Cotogni was an especial favorite of Verdi's, who praised him for the beauty, warmth and strength of his voice, as well as for the emotional intensity which he brought to his musical interpretations. He sang most of the major Verdi baritone roles and took part in the first Italian staging of Don Carlo, in Bologna
Bologna
Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...
in 1867, under the supervision of the composer. But his operatic triumphs were not confined to Verdi's compositions. He was also a brilliant exponent of the elegant but technically demanding bel canto
Bel canto
Bel canto , along with a number of similar constructions , is an Italian opera term...
music of Gaetano Donizetti
Gaetano Donizetti
Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti was an Italian composer from Bergamo, Lombardy. His best-known works are the operas L'elisir d'amore , Lucia di Lammermoor , and Don Pasquale , all in Italian, and the French operas La favorite and La fille du régiment...
and Vincenzo 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...
.
Cotogni retired from the operatic stage in February 1898, having sung an estimated 127 (some sources say 157) roles. They ranged from the major parts in Mozart's Italian operas through to what were, from Cotogni's perspective, cutting-edge modern parts in such verismo
Verismo
Verismo was an Italian literary movement which peaked between approximately 1875 and the early 1900s....
works as 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...
and 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...
. His interpretations of the lead baritone characters in Un ballo in maschera
Un ballo in maschera
Un ballo in maschera , is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi with text by Antonio Somma. The libretto is loosely based on an 1833 play, Gustave III, by French playwright Eugène Scribe who wrote about the historical assassination of King Gustav III of Sweden...
, Ernani
Ernani
Ernani is an operatic dramma lirico in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on the play Hernani by Victor Hugo. The first production took place at La Fenice Theatre, Venice on 9 March 1844...
, Linda di Chamounix
Linda di Chamounix
Linda di Chamounix is an operatic melodramma semiserio in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. The Italian libretto was written by Gaetano Rossi. It premiered in Vienna, at the Kärntnertortheater, on May 19, 1842.-Performance history:...
, 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...
, L'elisir d'amore
L'elisir d'amore
L'elisir d'amore is an opera by the Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti. It is a melodramma giocoso in two acts...
and Il barbiere di Siviglia were especially admired. Cotogni's final appearance was as Don Pasquale
Don Pasquale
Don Pasquale is an opera buffa, or comic opera, in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. The librettist Giovanni Ruffini wrote the Italian language libretto after Angelo Anelli's libretto for Stefano Pavesi's Ser Marcantonio ....
in Donizetti's comic opera of the same name.
In retirement, Cotogni became one of the most celebrated vocal teachers in history. He taught briefly in St Petersburg (at the invitation of Anton Rubinstein
Anton Rubinstein
Anton Grigorevich Rubinstein was a Russian-Jewish pianist, composer and conductor. As a pianist he was regarded as a rival of Franz Liszt, and he ranks amongst the great keyboard virtuosos...
) but he had to abandon this post in consequence of a serious illness, subsequently taking up an appointment in 1902 as a professor at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome. Here he founded what became known as the "Roman School of Singing". Among those who studied under him during this period were the world famous tenors Beniamino Gigli
Beniamino Gigli
Beniamino Gigli 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. Music critics sometimes took him to task, however, for what was perceived to be the over-emotionalism...
and Giacomo Lauri-Volpi
Giacomo Lauri-Volpi
Giacomo 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....
and the leading baritones Mario Basiola, Benvenuto Franci and Mariano Stabile
Mariano Stabile
Mariano Stabile was an Italian baritone, particularly associated with the Italian repertory, especially the role of Falstaff.- Career :...
. Two other star singers, Jean de Reszke
Jean de Reszke
Jean de Reszke, born Jan Mieczyslaw, , was a Polish tenor. Renowned internationally for the high quality of his singing and the elegance of his bearing, he became the biggest male opera star of the late 19th century....
and Mattia Battistini
Mattia Battistini
Mattia Battistini was an Italian operatic baritone. He became internationally famous due to the beauty of his voice and the virtuosity of his singing technique, and he earned the sobriquet "King of Baritones".-Early life:...
, consulted him as well.
Cotogni ranks with his contemporaries Francesco Graziani
Francesco Graziani
Francesco "Ciccio" Graziani is an Italy football manager and former player.-Playing career:Graziani was born in Subiaco, in the province of Rome....
, Jean-Baptiste Faure
Jean-Baptiste Faure
Jean-Baptiste Faure was a celebrated French operatic baritone and an art collector of great significance. He also composed a number of classical songs.-Singing career:Faure was born in Moulins...
and Sir Charles Santley
Charles Santley
Sir Charles Santley was an English-born opera and oratorio star with a bravuraFrom the Italian verb bravare, to show off. A florid, ostentatious style or a passage of music requiring technical skill technique who became the most eminent English baritone and male concert singer of the Victorian era...
as the foremost baritone of his star-studded generation. He "had a very brief and scarcely revealing relationship with the gramophone
Phonograph
The phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...
; at the age of 77 ... with the tenor Francesco Marconi
Francesco Marconi
Francesco Marconi was an operatic tenor from Rome who enjoyed an important international career. In 1924, a reputable biographical dictionary of musicians called him 'one of the most renowned and esteemed singers of the last 50 years'...
, he recorded [the] duet 'I Mulatieri'", writes Michael Scott. "Not surprisingly Marconi gets the better of it. Still, however difficult it is to make out Cotogni's contribution, it is all we have left of a singer who for over 40 years dominated the stages in London, Madrid and Lisbon, St Petersburg and Moscow and throughout Italy."
Cotogni died of old age in Rome less than a month prior to the 1918 armistice which ended World War I.
Sources
- Roland Mancini and Jean-Jacques Rouveroux, (orig. H. Rosenthal and J. Warrack, French edition), Guide de l'opéra, Les indispensables de la musique (Fayard, 1995). ISBN 2-213-01563-6
- Arthur Eaglefield HullArthur Eaglefield HullArthur Eaglefield Hull was an English music critic, writer, composer and organist.Hull was initially a music student of Tobias Matthay and graduated with a Doctorate of Music from Oxford University...
(Ed.), A Dictionary of Modern Music and Musicians (Dent, London and Toronto 1924).