TAGLIAVINI: A TENOR KEEPS ON SINGING

An autographed photo of a beaming Luciano Pavarotti hangs prominently on one wall. Ferruccio Tagliavini, a Pavarotti of an earlier era, is playing host in the apartment of an American involved in the affairs of the Italian magazine “La Follia.”

Now 73, Tagliavini was the first Italian tenor to make a splash in the United States after World War II. He is in New York only for a few days to perform at a Town Hall benefit for the magazine in company with his longtime friend and colleague, soprano Licia Albanese, 73.

Unless the Italians have come up with a hair-coloring process superior to any known to man, he looks amazingly young. There is hardly any gray in the full head of hair. Described by one critic as “plump but manly” during his initial appearances in this country, there is not a trace of plumpness now. His Italian suit is stylishly cut.

He is cordial, though in a hurry. A limousine is coming to take him to the airport. He switches back and forth easily from English to Italian.

When he made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera on Jan. 10, 1947, as Rodolfo in “La Boheme,” Tagliavini was like vocal manna from heaven. There had been no Italian imports to this country after Mussolini put an embargo on singers’ travel in 1940. And, as has been noted before, for tastes in opera, New York is a largely Mediterranean town.

He was preceded by a highly acclaimed album, a two-record 78-r.p.m. set from RCA Victor. More important, Tagliavini had made friends. To keep body and soul together under the wretched conditions of the war up the boot of Italy, he had followed the U.S. troops, literally singing for his supper.

“I had been waiting for the Americans,” he said with a smile.

At that time in the United States, classical music was well-served by two Monday night radio programs, “Voice of Firestone” followed by the more prestigious “Telephone Hour.” It was the latter which gave the newcomer a tremendous boost. What with the GIs, records, the radio and the fact that he delivered at his debut, Tagliavini was instant box-office.

The tenor had begun his operatic life with a debut in Florence in 1938. “I was married to ‘Boheme,’ ” he said, “Almost all my debuts in major houses were as Rodolfo. After Florence I sang in Venice where I met the conductor who became the most important influence on my career, Antonio Guarnieri. He is less well known in America than that other wonderful maestro, Tullio Serafin, but in many ways he was the best.

“He taught me to go for quality, not quantity. I have (he speaks in the present) what in Italian we call una voce qui corre --a voice that runs. It’s difficult to explain in English, but it means a voice that can go anywhere, do anything as long as it’s within its proscribed limits. Bidu Sayao’s was a soprano like that.

“My voice is light, so early on I decided to limit myself to the roles I did best. You don’t know how many performances of ‘Andrea Chenier’ I did in my dreams. How I loved that opera! But if I had sung one performance I knew I could never do the mezza voce, the pianissimo, the mixture of head tone and falsetto, that people expected from me. So no Chenier, and my career has lasted 49 years.

“Next I did Rome, Naples and finally La Scala in 1942. It was ‘Il Barbiere di Siviglia’ under another fine conductor, Gino Marinuzzi. I added ‘Sonnambula’ with Toti dal Monte and also ‘Manon.’ ”

Soon, however, the war forced the closing of the Italian theaters. By then, Tagliavini had married spinto soprano Pia Tassinari (she ended her career as a dramatic mezzo), and he had added responsibilities. Waiting for the Americans seemed to be the best bet.

In New York, Tagliavini triumphed. The often acidic Virgil Thomson reported in the Herald-Tribune, “. . . (he) has a lyric tenor voice fresh in timbre and not without power . . . sings high and loud with perfect adequacy and no inconsiderable brilliance. . . . Not in a long time have we heard tenor singing at once so easy and so adequate. He even at one point sang a genuine open-throated pianissimo, the first I have heard since I started reviewing opera.”

He was fortunate with his ladies at the Met. His Mimi was Albanese. For “L’Elisir d’Amore” he had the enchanting Sayao. For “Lucia” he had Lily Pons. He said proudly that Pons sent him flowers before each performance.

Tagliavini admitted to only two moments of doubt. At his first performance, he noticed someone leaving his seat before the act was over. He later found out it was a critic going to a phone for a photographer to be sent over. At his San Francisco debut in “L’Elisir,” also in 1947, the ovation after “Una furtiva lagrima” lasted 15 minutes. He wondered if he might be slipping, when in Los Angeles the applause was timed at only nine.

His wife, Tassinari, was with him and even sang a few Toscas at the Met, but her razorish top did not find universal favor. They made something of a specialty of “L’Amico Fritz” in regional companies (with the Cherry Duet from that opera and the haunting “Lontano, lontano” from Boito’s “Mefistofele,” the “Telephone Hour” had a sure-fire duo). Otherwise her career here did not turn out to be a major one.

The tenor’s personal life was not uneventful, to say the least. Shortly after he came here, he was the subject of a paternity suit.

“It was a bluff thought up by a bunch of gangsters,” he said, “but the publicity was terrible. When the verdict came down, I was singing in San Francisco. Just for the hell of it, I carried a copy of a local paper on stage and opened it up to show the headline to the audience: ‘TAGLIAVINI INNOCENT.’

“I received one of my great ovations,” he said with satisfaction.

An less-than-secretive affair with a Spanish soprano followed, and the result was a daughter whom Tagliavini recognized. The child is now a 33-year-old woman who is a computer whiz working out of Geneva.

The marriage to Tassinari, good days and bad, lasted 30 years. When it ended, the tenor remarried. He speaks with great affection of his 12-year-old daughter, Barbara, whom he predicts will be a brilliant mathematician.

“I am still very close to my first wife, I love her. Every day I am at home I usually speak to her on the phone.”

He made no comment on how the present Mrs. Tagliavini may feel about that.

A ring of the doorbell announced the photographer. The interview was halted as Tagliavini asked her if she was married, whether she had a boyfriend. He kissed her on both cheeks and advised her not to get tied down. He was touchingly cooperative with her.

On the subject of his past prima donnas, Tagliavini is ever the perfect gentleman. “Everyone was great--Licia, Bidu, Lily, Pia.”

He was a good deal less than laudatory when he recounted two performances he endured at the hands of the legendary Bulgarian diva Ljuba Welitsch. Her Viennese days had given the soprano vastexperience in the art of upstaging. Her idea of showing passion in the first act of “Tosca” was sticking her fingers in his ears, preventing him from hearing the orchestra. Still, he was luckier than the Scarpia, Lawrence Tibbett, whose “dead” body was viciously kicked at the end of the second act.

The second encounter was a “Boheme.” He and Dorothy Kirsten suffered through Welitsch’s first and only New York Musetta. She rode her Marcello, Paolo Silveri, piggyback. The Tribune headlined Thomson’s review, “FEMALE IMPERSONATOR” after the unhappy critic compared Welitsch to Bert Savoy, a famous drag performer.

“Great voice, though,” the tenor said, ruefully.

Tagliavini may be loathe to criticize colleagues, but he exercised no such restraint on the subject of Rudolf Bing. When the new general manager took over the Met in 1950, the tenor was not high on his list of priorities. Bing seemed to prefer Jussi Bjoerling, who had returned to the company from Sweden, the unpredictable Giuseppe di Stefano and the emerging Richard Tucker.

“Bing destroyed the atmosphere Edward Johnson had built up previously. How can you expect an artist to go to a rehearsal at 9 o’clock in the morning?” Tagliavini asked in disgust.

The relationship was an uneasy one, and after he had received no new production, Tagliavini left the Met in 1954. He returned for one “Elisir” in 1960. On the basis of that success, even though he had been singing for 22 years and could scarcely have had the bloom of youth still on his voice, Bing offered him Des Grieux in “Manon.” When that was later changed to “Barbiere,” however, Tagliavini left the Met for good.

His greatest lingering regret: no one in the United States offered his favorite part: the title role in “Werther.”

As his career wound down, he returned to the Italian houses, went to Japan and Australia. America kept up with him through the release of radio broadcasts by Cetra of complete performances.

“I suffer in one place too long,” he said, “I don’t like routine.”

He was particularly pleased when Maria Callas requested him for her second recording of “Lucia.” “I felt like I was part of history,” he said.

“Once Maria and I were having lunch. Her husband, Meneghini, came in all excited. He told us Onassis had invited them to join him on the Christina. Maria didn’t want to go, but I guess she must have been talked into it. Imagine what might have happened if she hadn’t.”

If Tagliavini admired of most of his sopranos, he was resolutely silent about rivals and today’s crop of tenors. He slipped only once when asked about lyric tenors who take on dramatic parts that shorten their careers, specifically Di Stefano in his day and currently Jose Carreras. The response was simple:

“Stupid!”

As for young sopranos, he spoke admiringly of Fiamma Izzo D’Amico, the Karajan protege who recently canceled her U.S. debut in San Francisco. Among conductors he especially admires Riccardo Muti as one who will work with a cast from the ground up.

Claudio Abbado came off less well. “There are some people who bend with the current wind, you know. Depending on who’s in fashion politically, it doesn’t matter whether it’s Christian Democrat, Socialist or what have you, they do what’s advantageous at the moment.”

Tagliavini saved his true wrath for the modern stage directors and designers who, he said, pervert opera. He would name no names, but he told of a recent “Elisir” he walked out of.

“It was all abstract and symbolic.”

He said he appears mostly in opera and recitals these days to help youngsters on the way up. He doesn’t think much about retiring.

“The voice,” he said, “is still there.”