Apollo Granforte

Apollo Granforte (20 July 1886, Legnano – 11 June 1975, Milan) was an Italian opera singer and one of the leading baritones during the inter-war period of the 20th century.

Apollo Granforte
Portrait of Italian baritone Apollo Granforte standing with arm raised
Portrait of Italian baritone Apollo Granforte standing with arm raised
Background information
Birth nameApollinare Granforte
Born(1886-07-20)20 July 1886
Legnano, Italy
OriginLegnano, Italy
Died11 June 1975(1975-06-11) (aged 88)
Milan, Italy
GenresOpera
Occupation(s)operatic and concert baritone
Years active1913-1975

Early years and education

At 9 o'clock on the morning of 22 July 1886, when Granforte was two days old, he was left in a basket at the Ospedale Civile in Legnano, wrapped and wearing a bonnet to which a brass medal was attached by white cotton thread.[1] The nuns at the hospice remarked on his large body and strong profile and thus dubbed him Apollinare Granforte,[2] the name which the president Giovanni Tebon wrote down in the hospice's official records. He was adopted by Gaetano Brigo and Rosa Uccelli, a couple from Noventa Vicentina. At nine years old, he was an apprentice cobbler and enjoyed acting and singing at the small theater in town. At 16 he sang tenor in Lucia di Lammermoor, put on by a small company that traveled the countryside and performed in town squares.

On 5 October 1905 Granforte married eighteen-year-old Amabile Frison. They had a daughter, Maria, in the same year and emigrated to Buenos Aires in Argentina to be with Granforte's brother Erminio Brigo. He continued to work as a shoemaker, and on Sundays sang for the Italian immigrants in local taverns. There he was heard by a wealthy music lover named Pedro Valmagia (aka Pietro Balmaggia), who paid for him to study at the La Prensa Conservatory of Buenos Aires. He then transferred to the Instituto Musical Santa Cecilia in the same city, studying with masters Nicholas (Nicola?) Guerrera and Guido Capocci.

Granforte made his stage debut in Rosario, as Germont, in 1913 when he was 27. In that same year he debuted in a concert in La Plata, singing "Eri tu" from Un ballo in maschera and the "Ciel! mio padre" duet from Aida with a soprano student at the Verdi Conservatory in La Plata.[3]

In 1913, at the age of 27, Granforte made his stage debut as Germont at the Rosario Politeama. His success there led to successive engagements at other provincial theatres in Buenos Aires. By 1915 he had also appeared at the Buenos Aires Politeama, the Solis of Montevideo and at Pelotas, Rio Grande and Porto Allegre in Brazil. In one four-week period at Montevideo he sang Silvio in Pagliacci, Marcello in La bohème, Alfio in Cavalleria rusticana, Germont in Traviata, Enrico in Lucia, Rigoletto, Barnaba in La Gioconda, Valentin in Faust, Amonasro in Aida, and Alfonso in La favorita.

While still in Argentina, Granforte and Frison had two more daughters, Ofelia and Leonora. At the outbreak of World War I, Granforte and family returned to Italy sponsored by Valmagia, who had earlier helped the baritone begin his studies. Granforte enlisted at Parma as a grenadier, but became ill and was found unsuitable for the front lines. He then toured the war zone entertaining the Italian troops, alongside Alessandro Bonci and Elvira de Hidalgo.

Career

External video
video icon “Rare FILM of Apollo Granforte - Largo al factotum [Il barbiere di Siviglia] - 1932”, on YouTube

After the war, while Granforte was singing at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome, his fourth daughter, Costanza, was born. The director of the Opera, Emma Carelli, sent Granforte to Milan for finishing touches in his vocal technique and repertoire. He studied there with the bass Luigi Lucenti and coach Tullio Voghera.

In 1919, Granforte was at Naples and there met composer Pietro Mascagni. They became lifelong friends and collaborators, the latter always choosing the former as lead baritone when he conducted. In 1921, the impresario Lusardi introduced Granforte to La Scala in Milan. Conductor Arturo Toscanini entrusted the role of Amfortas to him, and in 1921 he made his debut there. In 1924, he went to Australia on a successful tour with Nellie Melba. During Granforte's subsequent tour of Australia in J. C. Williamson's 1932 Grand Opera season, Frank Thring Sr.'s Melbourne-based Efftee Productions filmed him with the Williamson-Imperial Grand Opera Company in a selection from Rossini's The Barber of Seville. This relatively brief footage was released on VHS in 1989 by the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.

Granforte possessed a big, rich, vibrant voice, quite similar in quality to that of Titta Ruffo, with a sinister undertone, and quickly established himself in the great baritone roles of Verdi and the verismo composers. He sang some Wagner as well, and also sang Menècrate in the first performance of Mascagni's Nerone in 1935. His last operatic appearance, after a career of ~ 1,800 performances, was on 26 February 1943 in Pizzetti's Fedra at Trieste's Teatro Verdi.

After retiring from the stage, he taught at the Music Conservatory of Ankara, then at the Prague Opera and in Milan, where he opened a music school at his residence on Via Arici in the Crescenzago section. Among his pupils were soprano Leyla Gencer, bass Raffaele Arié, and tenors Flaviano Labò and Jesús Quiñones Ledesma. He participated in musical life into his 80s, and was often an adjudicator for music competitions. Besides his musical life Granforte was also a successful businessman, inventing a kind of rotating or swiveling lamp in the process. Along with business partner Luigi Devizzi he owned the factory that produced these lamps, as well as a farm, both situated at a large villa in the Milan suburb of Gorgonzola, where he died on 11 June 1975.

Granforte can be heard on HMV early-electrical 78-rpm recordings of Il trovatore, Otello, Pagliacci and Tosca. He also recorded 78-rpm discs of individual arias and duets in the 1920s and 1930s, and the best of these have been reissued on a Preiser CD anthology. He is considered to have been one of the great Italian baritones of the 1920s and 1930s, alongside Mariano Stabile, Carlo Galeffi, Cesare Formichi, Carlo Tagliabue, Benvenuto Franci and Mario Basiola.

Repertoire

Roles displayed in bold type were created by Granforte in their world premiere.

Sortable table
Composer Opera/oratorio Role
Emilio Arrieta Marina Roque
Vincenzo Bellini I puritani Riccardo
Hector Berlioz La damnation de Faust Méphistophélès
Georges Bizet Carmen Escamillo
Georges Bizet Les pêcheurs de perles Zurga
Felipe Boero El matrero Don Liborio
Gianni Bucceri Marken Il campanaro
Carlos de Campos Um caso singular Carvalho Lopes
Alfredo Catalani La Wally Gellner
Alfredo Catalani Loreley Hermann
Nino Cattozzo I misteri gaudiosi Giuseppe
Francesco Cilea L'arlesiana Baldassare
Gaetano Donizetti Don Pasquale Dr. Malatesta
Gaetano Donizetti La favorita Alfonso
Gaetano Donizetti Lucia di Lammermoor Enrico
Luigi Gazzotti Lo zingaro cieco Lucio
Umberto Giordano Andrea Chenier Carlo Gérard
Umberto Giordano Fedora De Siriex
Umberto Giordano La cena delle beffe Neri Chiaramantesi
Umberto Giordano Siberia Gleby
Barbara Giuranna Jamanto Jusuf
Charles Gounod Faust Valentin
Ernst Křenek Cefalo e Procri Crono
Lamberto Landi Il Pergolese Enzo Spinelli
Ruggero Leoncavallo I pagliacci Silvio
Ruggero Leoncavallo I pagliacci Tonio
Ruggero Leoncavallo Gli Zingari Tamar
Lino Liviabella Antigone Creonte
Adriano Lualdi La figlia del re Svarga
Gian Francesco Malipiero Giulio Cesare Bruto
Pietro Mascagni Cavalleria Rusticana Alfio
Pietro Mascagni Isabeau Re Raimondo
Pietro Mascagni L'amico Fritz David
Pietro Mascagni Le maschere Capitan Spaventa
Pietro Mascagni Lodoletta Giannotto
Pietro Mascagni Nerone Menecrate
Pietro Mascagni Parisina Nicolò d'Este
Jules Massenet Thaïs Anthanaël
Italo Montemezzi Hellera Schauwalki
Italo Montemezzi La nave Sergio Gràtico
Italo Montemezzi La notte di Zoraima Pedrito
Italo Montemezzi L'amore dei tre re Manfredo
Giuseppe Mulè Dafni Sileno
Modest Mussorgsky Boris Godunov Boris
Jacques Offenbach Les contes d'Hoffmann Coppelius/Miracle/Dapertutto
Jaume Pahissa La princesa Margarida [unknown]
Mario Persico Morenita Ribera
Ildebrando Pizzetti Fedra Teseo
Ildebrando Pizzetti Lo straniero Scedeur
Amilcare Ponchielli La gioconda Barnaba
Giacomo Puccini La bohème Marcello
Giacomo Puccini La fanciulla del West Jack Rance
Giacomo Puccini Il tabarro Michele
Giacomo Puccini Tosca Scarpia
Ottorino Respighi Lucrezia Sesto Tarquinio
Ottorino Respighi Maria egiziaca Abbate Zosimo/Pellegrino
Igino Robbiani Guido del popolo Oliverotto
Gioacchino Rossini Il barbiere di Siviglia Figaro
Armando Seppilli La nave rossa Ardì
Camille Saint-Saëns Samson et Dalila High Priest of Dagon
Richard Strauss Salome Jochanaan
Eraldo Trentinaglia Rosamunda [unknown]
Giuseppe Verdi Aïda Amonasro
Giuseppe Verdi Un ballo in maschera Renato
Giuseppe Verdi La forza del destino Don Carlo di Vargas
Giuseppe Verdi Rigoletto Rigoletto
Giuseppe Verdi La traviata Germont
Giuseppe Verdi Il trovatore Conte Di Luna
Giuseppe Verdi Otello Iago
Facundo de la Viña La espigadora [unknown]
Franco Vittadini Caracciolo Alì
Richard Wagner Götterdämmerung Gunther
Richard Wagner Lohengrin Telramund
Richard Wagner Parsifal Amfortas
Richard Wagner Parsifal Klingsor
Richard Wagner Siegfried Wanderer
Richard Wagner Tannhäuser Wolfram
Richard Wagner Tristan und Isolde Kurwenal
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari Le donne curiose Pantalone

References

  1. Zanoli, Ivano (October 2011). "Legnaghesi Famosi - Apollinare Granforte (Apollo in Arte) - Baritono" (PDF). Il Basso Adige (10): 8. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2 June 2016. Retrieved 2 May 2016.
  2. Ledesma, Jésus Quiñones. "Thanks to my friends Tom Silverborg..." Facebook. Retrieved 2 May 2016.
  3. Rideout, Bob. "Some historical updates - Granforte, Burzio, De Angelis". Opera-L. Archived from the original on 1 June 2016. Retrieved 2 May 2016.

Sources

  • Grove Music Online, J.B. Steane, Oxford University Press, 2008.
  • Ledesma, Jesús Quiñones. Posts by former Granforte student on his personal and public Facebook pages, 2010–2013.
  • Rideout, Bob. "Apollo Granforte", The Record Collector: A Magazine for Collectors of Recorded Vocal Art, volume 41, no. 4, 1996.
  • Rideout, Bob. Posts on the Opera-L listserv, April 1999.
  • Zanoli, Ivano. "Legnaghesi Famosi - Apollinare Granforte (Apollo in Arte) - Baritono", Il Basso Adige, no. 10, October 2011.
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