Pasqual Mario Marafioti was a physician and laryngologist for the Metropolitan Opera. He gave up his medical practice in 1930 and became a vocal coach for Metro pictures.[ clarification needed ][ citation needed ] There he coached Enrico Caruso as well as Marion Bell.[ citation needed ] He was also Caruso's personal physician.
Marafioti became famous for studying Enrico Caruso's voice while coaching him. He subsequently published the book Caruso's Method of Voice Production: The Scientific Culture of the Voice in 1922, shortly after Caruso's death. [1] Caruso's Method of Voice Production is a detailed and scientific explanation of Caruso's natural and unique singing style. [1] The book focuses on physiological methods of voice production. Although this method of voice production was natural to Caruso, Marafioti believed this scientific method can be taught to other students of singing. The book emphasizes on the speaking voice as according to the author singing is merely speaking in musical rhythm. [1] : 51
Vibrato is a musical effect consisting of a regular, pulsating change of pitch. It is used to add expression to vocal and instrumental music. Vibrato is typically characterized in terms of two factors: the amount of pitch variation and the speed with which the pitch is varied.
Enrico Caruso was an Italian operatic first lyric tenor then dramatic tenor. He sang to great acclaim at the major opera houses of Europe and the Americas, appearing in a wide variety of roles that ranged from the lyric to the dramatic. Generally recognized as the first international recording star, Caruso made around 250 commercially released recordings from 1902 to 1920.
Falsetto is the vocal register occupying the frequency range just above the modal voice register and overlapping with it by approximately one octave.
Alice Geraldine Farrar was an American lyric soprano who could also sing dramatic roles. She was noted for her beauty, acting ability, and "the intimate timbre of her voice." In the 1910s, she also found success as an actress in silent films. She had a large following among young women, who were nicknamed "Gerry-flappers".
Manuel Patricio Rodríguez García, was a Spanish singer, music educator, and vocal pedagogue. He invented the first laryngoscope.
Amelita Galli-Curci was an Italian lyric coloratura soprano. She was one of the most famous operatic singers of the 20th century and a popular recording artist, with her records selling in large numbers.
Pagliacci is an Italian opera in a prologue and two acts, with music and libretto by Ruggero Leoncavallo. The opera tells the tale of Canio, actor and leader of a commedia dell'arte theatrical company, who murders his wife Nedda and her lover Silvio on stage during a performance. Pagliacci premiered at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan on 21 May 1892, conducted by Arturo Toscanini, with Adelina Stehle as Nedda, Fiorello Giraud as Canio, Victor Maurel as Tonio, and Mario Ancona as Silvio. Soon after its Italian premiere, the opera played in London and in New York. Pagliacci is the best-known of Leoncavallo's ten operas and remains a staple of the repertoire.
The Great Caruso is a 1951 biographical film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and starring Mario Lanza as famous operatic tenor Enrico Caruso. The movie was directed by Richard Thorpe and produced by Joe Pasternak with Jesse L. Lasky as associate producer. The screenplay, by Sonya Levien and William Ludwig, was suggested by the biography Enrico Caruso His Life and Death by Dorothy Caruso, the tenor's widow. The original music was composed and arranged by Johnny Green and the cinematography by Joseph Ruttenberg. Costume design was by Helen Rose and Gile Steele.
Mario Lanza was an American tenor and actor. He was a Hollywood film star popular in the late 1940s and the 1950s. Lanza began studying to be a professional singer at the age of 16. After appearing at the Hollywood Bowl in 1947, Lanza signed a seven-year film contract with Louis B. Mayer, the head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, who saw his performance and was impressed by his singing. Prior to that, the adult Lanza sang only two performances of an opera. The following year (1948) he sang the role of Pinkerton in Puccini's Madama Butterfly in New Orleans.
Titta Ruffo, born as Ruffo Cafiero Titta, was an Italian operatic baritone who had a major international singing career. Known as the "Voce del leone", he was greatly admired, even by rival baritones, such as Giuseppe De Luca, who said of Ruffo: "His was not a voice, it was a miracle", and Victor Maurel, the creator of Verdi's Iago and Falstaff. Maurel said that the notes of Ruffo's upper register were the most glorious baritone sounds he had ever heard. Indeed Walter Legge, the prominent classical record producer, went so far as to call Ruffo "a genius".
Bel canto —with several similar constructions —is a term with several meanings that relate to Italian singing.
Giuseppe De Luca, was an Italian baritone who achieved his greatest triumphs at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. He notably created roles in the world premieres of two operas by Giacomo Puccini: Sharpless in Madama Butterfly and the title role in Gianni Schicchi.
Rouvaun (1932–1975) was born Jim Haun in Bingham, Utah. A child singer with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in Salt Lake City, he went on to study voice at the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music and perform with the Beverly Hills Opera Company. Nonetheless, he remained a struggling woodworker studying voice. Rouvaun was a virtual unknown until February 5, 1967, when he appeared in Las Vegas as the headline singer leading the 100-person Frederick Apcar French stage review Casino De Paris at the Dunes Hotel. His first record label, KALAMO, described him on his debut album cover as "The World's Greatest Singer".
Park Benjamin (1849–1922) was an American patent lawyer and writer. He was born in New York City, graduated at the United States Naval Academy in 1867, resigned from the Navy in 1869, and graduated at the Albany Law School in the following year. He was associate editor of The Scientific American from 1872 to 1878 and subsequently edited Appleton's Cyclopedia of Applied Mechanics and Cyclopædia of Modern Mechanism. He is also famous as the father-in-law of operatic tenor Enrico Caruso.
Francesco Lamperti was an Italian singing teacher and the father of the famed singing teacher, Giovanni Battista Lamperti, the author of The Technics of Bel Canto.
A voice type is a group of voices with similar vocal ranges, capable of singing in a similar tessitura, and with similar vocal transition points (passaggi). Voice classification is most strongly associated with European classical music, though it, and the terms it utilizes, are used in other styles of music as well.
Pasquale Amato was an Italian operatic baritone. Amato enjoyed an international reputation but attained the peak of his fame in New York City, where he sang with the Metropolitan Opera from 1908 until 1921.
Mario Chamlee was one of the lyric tenors who inherited several roles associated with Enrico Caruso at the Metropolitan Opera.
Frances Robinson-Duff (1878-1951) was an American actress and voice teacher known as "the foremost dramatic coach in America" in the first half of the 20th century.
Bruno Zirato was an Italian immigrant to the United States who became the personal secretary to famous operatic tenor Enrico Caruso, personal manager to various singers and conductors, and was the managing director of the New York Philharmonic.