By the close of his singing career, the stirring voice of gifted Italian baritone, Tito Gobbi, had been heard in nearly a hundred operatic roles across Europe and America. Gobbi was not only a fine operatic singer, he was also a very talented actor on stage and in films, known for his conscientious preparation for both the musical and dramatic aspects of each of his parts, no matter how small. He built up a solid body of work with the Rome Opera and was renowned around the world.
Tito Gobbi was born in Bassano del Grappa, near Venice, in 1913. After a period spent studying law at Padua, he turned to singing, training in Rome. Gobbi made his operatic debut farther north, in the eastern Italian town of Gubbio, performing the role of Rodolfo in Bellini’s La Sonnambula in 1935.
Gobbi’s first major part came two years later in Rome, appearing as Germont in Verdi’s La Traviata. The director of the Rome Opera at this time was Tullio Serafin, an enthusiastic advocate of new works by Italian composers, and Gobbi went on to sing in operas by Ludovico Rocca, Mario Persico, Gian Francesco Malipiero and many others. In November 1942, he was given the title role in Wozzeck in the Italian premiere of Alban BERG’S 12-tone opera. Berg had left directions for the singers to produce a sound halfway between song and speech—an especially difficult task for Italian performers such as Gobbi, who were steeped in the melodic bel canto tradition. It was, however, this work more than any other that finally brought Gobbi to prominence.
For the whole of World War II, Gobbi was confined to performing only in Italy, where he continued to sing successfully in leading roles such as Iago in Verdi’s Otello, Count Almaviva in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, and in the title role of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Following the end of the war, Gobbi was invited to try his hand at acting in Italy’s burgeoning motion picture industry. This proved a successful venture, and Gobbi starred in a full-length movie of Rossini’s // barbiere di Siviglia in 1945. Shortly after this, he sang opposite film actress, Anna Magnani (whose voice was dubbed by Onelia Fineschi), in a movie version of Puccini’s opera, Tosca.
In 1948, Gobbi made his American operatic debut in San Francisco, starring in Rossini’s 7/ barbiere di Siviglia. In 1954, he joined the Chicago Lyric Opera, where he sang regularly for the next 19 years. In 1956, he performed for the first time with the Metropolitan Opera company in New York, singing the role of Scarpia in Tosca. He was to repeat this role, with Maria CALLAS as Tosca, when Callas reentered the operatic world at the Royal Opera House in London in 1964. Gobbi’s favourite role, however, remained that of Verdi’s Falstaff—a complex portrait of a knight’s twilight years of faded glory, spent pursuing women and drink. In 1965, Gobbi made a debut of a different kind, as an operatic producer in Chicago and at London’s Covent Garden.
In addition to his memorable operatic career, Tito Gobbi appeared in a total of 26 popular motion pictures, and was also the author of two books—the 1979 autobiography, Tito Gobbi: My Life, and Tito Gobbi on His World of Italian Opera, an analysis of the dramatic content of some of the major operas, aimed at young singers. For many years, Gobbi organised the International Singing Competition in his birthplace of Bassano del Grappa, as well as a summer school for opera singers in Asola, a small town in northern Italy, near Cremona. Gobbi died on March 5, 1984, in Rome.
Jane Prendergast
FURTHER READING
Gobbi, Tito. Tito Gobbi: My Life (New York: Doubleday, 1980);
Gobbi, Tito. Tito Gobbi on His World of Italian Opera (London: Hamilton, 1984).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Puccini: Tosca;
Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia;
Verdi: Don Carlos.