The death has been communicated of Daniele Barioni, a leading tenor at the Metropolitan Opera in the 1950s.
After 1952 he fell out of favour in New York and went on to sing in Philadelphia and elsewhere. He remained a fixture in Rome, but sang only once at La Scalka Milan.
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Beautiful yet underestimated in those days.
He sang at the Met until November 1962, in a total of 54 performances.
Here is a tribute, with him at his most stentorian
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh1NcDiuA70
R.I.P. Daniele Barioni.
RIP
Here are two clips from one of his warhorses, Andrea Chenier. One is lip-synced to an older recording — he was over 80 but still in possession of a voice that I am sure he showed off on the occasion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPNlNeV7oww
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtmExbY395U
Ah, the great old days when wonderful opera singers regularly appeared on late night and variety TV shows here in the US and became household names. This great tenor lived at exactly the right time – when the world appreciated and valued him!
For much of his career, Barioni was a near-ideal “Puccini tenor.” In Irving Kolodin’s history of the Metropolitan Opera (1883-1966), he notes that prior to the singer’s onstage arrival in February 1956: “Barioni had been pressed into service to make a recording for the Metropolitan Record Club … thus qualifying as a ‘voice’ of the Metropolitan even before he made his debut.”
Those “club” records, sold by mail-order, included the tenor in abridged versions of RIGOLETTO, TOSCA, and BUTTERFLY (the last two with Dorothy Kirsten). Barioni’s only major-label commercial opera was LA RONDINE, made for RCA in Rome in 1966 with Anna Moffo.
His final Puccini studio work lasts about 45 seconds. At the climax of Leontyne Price’s 1977 recording of “In Questa Reggia,” Barioni joins her to trumpet Calaf’s high notes.
Oh, to have been able to hear him sing Calaf @ the Met a few yrs.ago instead of Yusif Eyvazov!
“Yusuf” correct on that one but then people would be denied (denyet?) the pleasure (pain?) of the Russian songbird (trumpet swan?), Anna Nyetrialandtribulationkoko
“After 1952 he fell out of favour in New York and went on to sing in Philadelphia and elsewhere”
Typo here? Barioni only made his Met debut in 1956; he sang there until 1962.