1. Italo Campanini was a leading Italian operatic tenor, whose career reached its height in London in the 1870s and in New York City in the 1880s and 1890s.
21 Facts About Italo Campanini
1. 2.
Italo Campanini had a repertoire of 80 operas and was the brother of the orchestral conductor Cleofonte Campanini.
3.
Italo Campanini made his operatic debut as Manrico in Il trovatore, in 1869, at the Odessa Opera.
4.
Italo Campanini was an immediate success, being hailed by some as the tenor successor to Mario or Antonio Giuglini on what the critic Herman Klein called a night of triumphs.
5.
Italo Campanini remained with Mapleson but became difficult to manage.
6.
Italo Campanini made his first American appearances at the Academy of Music, New York, in 1873.
7.
Italo Campanini was still in New York on 23 March 1874 when he, Nilsson, Cary and Del Puente participated in the Italian-language production of Lohengrin at the Academy.
8.
Italo Campanini included such well known singers as Etelka Gerster, Minnie Hauk, Trebelli, Valleria, Galassi, and Del Puente.
9.
Italo Campanini sang opposite Gerster in Il talismano and La traviata, and with Marie Roze in La favorita, and a very wide range of operas was presented including Faust, Il flauto magico, Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Ruy Blas, Robert le Diable and Der Freischutz, in addition to much of the repertoire already mentioned.
10.
The London 1879 season had added Minnie Hauk, and Clara Louise Kellogg to the female company, and Italo Campanini was supported by the tenors Giuseppe Fancelli, Frapolli and Brignoli.
11.
Fancelli was infuriated by Italo Campanini assuming the title 'Primo Tenore Assoluto'.
12.
Mapleson had by now recruited Luigi Ravelli to relieve the burden on Italo Campanini, who had become his only principal tenor.
13.
In February 1882, the company was at the second great Cincinnati Opera Festival, where Italo Campanini appeared again as Don Jose.
14.
Italo Campanini staged Les Huguenots, Faust, Fidelio, Magic Flute, William Tell and Lohengrin.
15.
Meanwhile, the company rehearsed, and then presented, Meyerbeer's L'Africaine, in which Italo Campanini played Vasco da Gama opposite Hauk and Galassi; and in the spring 1882 Ernani, Don Giovanni and Les Huguenots were produced at the New York Academy of Music.
16.
Italo Campanini took the occasion to spend a season in Italy, where his younger brother Cleofonte Italo Campanini was launching a significant career as an operatic conductor.
17.
In 1883, at Parma, Italo Campanini sang in a series of performances conducted by his brother, so helping to establish him as conductor of the first rank.
18.
Italo Campanini developed increasingly a second career as a manager of opera.
19.
On 16 April 1888, a company under Italo Campanini's management presented the American premiere of Verdi's Otello at the New York Academy of Music, with Francesco Marconi, Eva Tetrazzini, Antonio Galassi and Sofia Scalchi: later in the run, Italo Campanini himself took over from Francesco Marconi in the role of Otello.
20.
Italo Campanini remained a member of the Metropolitan company from 1891 to 1894.
21.
Italo Campanini died at the Villa Vigatto, near Parma, in 1896.