Richard Torigi
Encyclopedia
Richard Torigi was an American baritone
and voice teacher
. He had an active singing career in opera
s, concerts, and musical
s from the 1940s through the 1980s. While still performing, he embarked on a second successful career as a voice teacher which led to teaching positions at a variety of institutions, including the Juilliard School
, the Eastman School of Music
, and the Academy of Vocal Arts
.
, Torigi was the son of Italian immigrants to the United States. He studied singing in New York with Eleanor McClellan who was also the teacher of Eileen Farrell
. In 1942 he made his Broadway
debut as a member of the ensemble in the revival of The Merry Widow
, and was heard later that year in the revival of The New Moon
. In 1947 he made his professional opera debut with the Rochester Opera as Escamillo in Georges Bizet
's Carmen
. He then toured the United States with the San Carlo Opera Company
in the late 1940s and in 1950 singing the role of Marcello in Giacomo Puccini
's La bohème
. In the Spring of 1951 he performed the role of Figaro in The Barber of Seville
in Los Angeles and with both the Cincinnati Zoo Opera and the St Louis Municipal Opera.
In 1951 Torigi made his debut with the New York City Opera
(NYCO) as Silvio in Pagliacci
. He performed regularly at the NYCO for the next 18 years; notably singing in the company premieres of Gian Carlo Menotti
's The Consul
(1952, John Sorel) and Gaetano Donizetti
's Don Pasquale
(1955, Malatesta). Other roles Torigi sang at the NYCO included Marcello, Sharpless in Madama Butterfly
, and Germont in La traviata
among others. His final performance with the company was as Silvio de Narni in Alberto Ginastera
's Bomarzo in October 1969. He had previously created that role in the world premiere of Bomarzo at the Washington National Opera
in 1967.
Torigi was also active on Broadway and with several other American opera companies during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1955 he made his debut at the Lyric Opera of Chicago
as Schaunard in La bohème. In 1956 he was an alternate for Robert Weede
as Tony in the original Broadway production of Frank Loesser
's The Most Happy Fella
. He later portrayed the role of Tony in the show's first National Tour.
After retiring from performance, Torigi worked as a vocal coach and voice teacher. He held teaching posts at a variety of institutions, including Juilliard, Eastman, and the AVA. One of his students was musician and voice actor Barry Carl
. He retired from teaching in 2003. He died in Sebastopol, California
in 2010 at the age of 92.
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...
and voice teacher
Voice teacher
A voice teacher or singing teacher is a musical instructor who trains adults and children in the art of singing. This generally involves training in breath control and support, proper tone production, pitch control and musical intonation, proper formation of vowels and consonants as well as...
. He had an active singing career in 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...
s, concerts, and musical
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
s from the 1940s through the 1980s. While still performing, he embarked on a second successful career as a voice teacher which led to teaching positions at a variety of institutions, including the Juilliard School
Juilliard School
The Juilliard School, located at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, United States, is a performing arts conservatory which was established in 1905...
, the Eastman School of Music
Eastman School of Music
The Eastman School of Music is a music conservatory located in Rochester, New York. The Eastman School is a professional school within the University of Rochester...
, and the Academy of Vocal Arts
Academy of Vocal Arts
The Academy of Vocal Arts is a school dedicated to providing free higher education to aspiring opera singers. The school was founded in 1934 by Helen Corning Warden and is located at 1920 Spruce Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.-History:...
.
Life and career
Born with the name Santo Tortorigi in BrooklynBrooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, Torigi was the son of Italian immigrants to the United States. He studied singing in New York with Eleanor McClellan who was also the teacher of Eileen Farrell
Eileen Farrell
Eileen Farrell was an American soprano who had a nearly 60 year long career performing both classical and popular music in concerts, theatres, on radio and television, and on disc. While she was active as an opera singer, her concert engagements far outnumbered her theatrical appearances...
. In 1942 he made his Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
debut as a member of the ensemble in the revival of The Merry Widow
The Merry Widow
The Merry Widow is an operetta by the Austro–Hungarian composer Franz Lehár. The librettists, Viktor Léon and Leo Stein, based the story – concerning a rich widow, and her countrymen's attempt to keep her money in the principality by finding her the right husband – on an 1861 comedy play,...
, and was heard later that year in the revival of The New Moon
The New Moon
The New Moon is the name of an operetta with music by Sigmund Romberg and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, Frank Mandel, and Laurence Schwab. The show was the third and last in a string of Broadway hits for Romberg written in the style of Viennese operetta...
. In 1947 he made his professional opera debut with the Rochester Opera as Escamillo in Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet formally Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, was a French composer, mainly of operas. In a career cut short by his early death, he achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, became one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertory.During a...
's 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...
. He then toured the United States with the San Carlo Opera Company
San Carlo Opera Company
The San Carlo Opera Company was the name of two different opera companies active in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century.-History:...
in the late 1940s and in 1950 singing the role of Marcello in Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo 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 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...
. In the Spring of 1951 he performed the role of Figaro in 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...
in Los Angeles and with both the Cincinnati Zoo Opera and the St Louis Municipal Opera.
In 1951 Torigi made his debut with the New York City Opera
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...
(NYCO) as Silvio 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...
. He performed regularly at the NYCO for the next 18 years; notably singing in the company premieres 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 The Consul
The Consul
The Consul is an opera in three acts with music and libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti, his first full-length opera. Its first performance was on March 1, 1950, at the Shubert Theatre in Philadelphia with Patricia Neway as the lead heroine Magda Sorel, Gloria Lane as the secretary of the consulate,...
(1952, John Sorel) and 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...
's 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 ....
(1955, Malatesta). Other roles Torigi sang at the NYCO included Marcello, Sharpless in Madama Butterfly
Madama Butterfly
Madama Butterfly is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, with an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. Puccini based his opera in part on the short story "Madame Butterfly" by John Luther Long, which was dramatized by David Belasco...
, and Germont in 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...
among others. His final performance with the company was as Silvio de Narni in Alberto Ginastera
Alberto Ginastera
Alberto Evaristo Ginastera was an Argentine composer of classical music. He is considered one of the most important Latin American classical composers.- Biography :...
's Bomarzo in October 1969. He had previously created that role in the world premiere of Bomarzo at the Washington National Opera
Washington National Opera
The Washington National Opera is an opera company in Washington, D.C., USA. Formerly the Opera Society of Washington and the Washington Opera, the company received Congressional designation as the National Opera Company in 2000. Performances are now given in the Opera House of the John F...
in 1967.
Torigi was also active on Broadway and with several other American opera companies during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1955 he made his debut at the Lyric Opera of Chicago
Lyric Opera of Chicago
Lyric Opera of Chicago is one of the leading opera companies in the United States. It was founded in Chicago in 1952, under the name 'Lyric Theatre of Chicago' by Carol Fox, Nicolà Rescigno and Lawrence Kelly, with a season that included Maria Callas's American debut in Norma...
as Schaunard in La bohème. In 1956 he was an alternate for Robert Weede
Robert Weede
-Biography:Born Robert Wiedefeld in Baltimore, Maryland, Weede studied voice at the Eastman School of Music and in Milan. He made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 1937, as Tonio in Pagliacci...
as Tony in the original Broadway production of Frank Loesser
Frank Loesser
Frank Henry Loesser was an American songwriter who wrote the lyrics and scores to the Broadway hits Guys and Dolls and How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, among others. He won separate Tony Awards for the music and lyrics in both shows, as well as sharing the Pulitzer Prize for...
's The Most Happy Fella
The Most Happy Fella
The Most Happy Fella is a 1956 musical with a book, music, and lyrics by Frank Loesser. The story, about a romance between an older man and younger woman, is based on the play They Knew What They Wanted by Sidney Howard...
. He later portrayed the role of Tony in the show's first National Tour.
After retiring from performance, Torigi worked as a vocal coach and voice teacher. He held teaching posts at a variety of institutions, including Juilliard, Eastman, and the AVA. One of his students was musician and voice actor Barry Carl
Barry Carl
Barry Strauss Carl is an American musician and voice-over actor best known as the bassist of the a cappella band Rockapella while the group was house band on the PBS children's geography game show Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? . He was a member of Rockapella from 1988 until he left the...
. He retired from teaching in 2003. He died in Sebastopol, California
Sebastopol, California
Sebastopol is a city in Sonoma County, California, United States, approximately north of San Francisco. The population was 7,379 at the 2010 census, but its businesses also serve surrounding rural portions of Sonoma County, totaling about 50,000 people...
in 2010 at the age of 92.