Titta Ruffo

Titta Ruffo (9 June 1877 – 5 July 1953), born as Ruffo Cafiero (double forename) Titta, was an Italian operatic baritone who had a major international singing career. Known as the "Voce del leone" ("voice of the lion"), 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" (although not often published is the second part of De Luca's conclusion "which he [Ruffo] bawled away..."), 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 (see Pleasants, cited below). Indeed Walter Legge, the prominent classical record producer, went so far as to call Ruffo "a genius".

Born Ruffo Titta in Pisa (he reversed his forename and surname for the stage), Ruffo was the son of a foreman at an ironworks, who named him after a favourite dog, Ruffo. His mother only ever called him "Cafiero". He studied singing and voice production with several teachers.

Ruffo made his operatic debut in 1898 at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome as the Herald in Wagner's Lohengrin. After a slow start, his career took off in the early 1900s and he quickly achieved international renown due to the power and ardency of voice and acting.

His other major debuts occurred in the following venues and years: Buenos Aires (1902), London (1903), Milan (1904), Lisbon (1907), the Paris Opéra (1911) and the Theatro Municipal (São Paulo) (1911). Ruffo made his American debut in Philadelphia in 1912 and sang extensively in Chicago. He reached the New York Metropolitan Opera relatively late in his career, in 1922, as Figaro in The Barber of Seville, having enlisted in the Italian army during World War I. He would give a total of 46 performances at the Met from 1922 through to 1929. While committed to the Met he was a pupil of voice teacher Estelle Liebling. In 1929 he signed a $350,000 (approximately $6,409,000 today) movie contract.

He retired in 1931, staying for several years in exile Switzerland and Paris. He wrote an autobiography, La mia parabola, which was translated into English in 1995 as My Parabola. In 1937 he returned to Italy, where he was later arrested by the authorities for opposing the Fascist regime and espousing socialist beliefs. His sister was married to Giacomo Matteotti, after whose murder by the Fascists he had vowed never to sing in Italy again. In the later years of his life, he maintained friendships with a variety of singers, notably with baritones Gino Bechi, Carlo Tagliabue and tenors Giacomo Lauri-Volpi and Giuseppe di Stefano.

Titta Ruffo died in Florence, Italy from heart disease on 5 July 1953, aged 76.

Ruffo's repertoire included most of the major baritone roles in French and Italian opera, including among others Rigoletto, Di Luna, Amonasro, Germont, Tonio, Rossini's Figaro, Valentin, Iago, Carlo (in both Ernani and La forza del destino), Nabucco, Vasco, Don Giovanni, Barnaba, Scarpia, Marcello, and Renato in Un ballo in maschera. He was also renowned for his interpretations of several baritone parts in operas that are largely forgotten today, namely, the title roles in Ambroise Thomas's Hamlet and Franchetti's Cristoforo Colombo plus Cascart in Leoncavallo's Zazà and Neri in Giordano's La cena delle beffe.

Like his tenor contemporary Enrico Caruso, Ruffo was said to embody a new style of singing in which power, declamatory force and a rich, chesty tone eclipsed the previous generation's emphasis on vocal grace, flexibility and technical finesse. Consequently, some conservative commentators compared Ruffo unfavorably with his elegant Italian predecessor Mattia Battistini, who was a master of bel canto and the possessor of a leaner, more silvery timbre than Ruffo's. However, according to modern-day critics like John Steane and Michael Scott, the difference between the two great baritones was not quite as clear cut as some have suggested in the past, because both Battistini and Ruffo displayed exceptional vocal agility and control plus the ability to sustain a long legato line. Both of them also favored a virile interpretive style and even shared a teacher in Venceslao Persichini.