Italo Campanini - American Career, Vocal Characteristics & Tenor Rivals

American Career, Vocal Characteristics & Tenor Rivals

After 1883, Campanini lived primarily in New York City, serving as the Metropolitan's leading tenor. He developed increasingly a second career as a manager of opera (as, in later times, did the tenors Giovanni Zenatello and Edward Johnson). On April 16, 1888, a company under Campanini's management presented the American premiere of Verdi's Otello at the New York Academy of Music, with Francesco Marconi, Luisa Tetrazzini, Antonio Galassi and Sofia Scalchi: later in the run, Campanini himself took over from Francesco Marconi in the role of Otello. Campanini's brother Cleofonte was brought in to conduct, and he married the singer Eva Tetrazzini, the great Luisa's sister. Campanini remained a member of the Metropolitan company from 1891 to 1894.

Campanini died at the Villa Vigatto, near Parma, in 1896.

He was among the most popular, hardworking and versatile Italian tenors active in the United States before the advent of the great Enrico Caruso in the early 1900s.

Apparently, while in the USA, he recorded his voice on a Bettini cylinder which now appears to be lost. During the peak of his career, Campanini's main tenor rivals among his Italian and Italianate contemporaries were Roberto Stagno, Julián Gayarre, Angelo Masini, Francesco Tamagno, Fernando Valero and Francesco Marconi. Of these only Tamagno, Valero and Marconi have left gramophone records of their art.

We do know, however, from contemporary descriptions that Campanini's voice was robust in tone. It extended up to a strong high C from the chest prior to an irreversible deterioration which began when Campanini was aged only in his forties. It also developed a wide vibrato which reduced its appeal to English-speaking critics. He shared this latter trait (or, in the opinion of British and American opera-goers, technical and stylistic flaw) with a number of other leading Mediterranean tenors of his era, including Gayarre, Stagno, Valero and, from a slightly younger generation, Fernando De Lucia.