Carlo Bergonzi Has Passed Away

My all-time favorite tenor and one of the last surviving titans of the ‘last golden age’ of opera has passed away: Carlo Bergonzi.

Bergonzi sang over 320 performances at The Met, debuting in AIDA in 1956 opposite the also-debuting Antonietta Stella. He sang his final Met performance in 1988 in LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR. Over the years, Bergonzi – who started his operatic career as a baritone – gradually lost the ease and surety of his upper register, but stylistically he remained a paragon throughout his long career.

When I started listening to opera at the age of 11, I had no idea of how long a singing career could last or how a voice would age. The first singers I fell in love with – Milanov, Tebaldi, Jan Peerce, Robert Merrill, Giorgio Tozzi : it seemed to me they were eternal, that they had always been singing and would always continue to sing, and that they would always sound exactly the same as they did on the first recordings I acquired. Imagine my despair when I discovered early on that two of my first idols, Jussi Bjorling and Leonard Warren, were already dead! 

I last saw Bergonzi onstage in 1988 as Rodolfo in LUISA MILLER, one of his last Met performances. People were raving about the staying power of this 64-year-old primo tenore but to me the voice was sadly pallid. The style, however, was wonderfully intact: the generosity of line, the feeling for the language, the skillful mastery of dynamics. Despite his admirable ability to cope with the music technically, I was disheartened and left midway thru the evening. Twelve years later, I was living in New York City when Bergonzi announced he would sing Verdi’s Otello in a concert performance at Carnegie Hall. My friends, knowing of my great love for the tenor, assumed I would be there but I feared it would be an unhappy evening…and it was: beset by vocal problems, he was forced to withdraw after Act II.

No, I would rather remember the great years, though in fact he was already well along in his career when I first heard him live in a concert performance of Catalani’s LA WALLY at Carnegie Hall in 1968. Appearing opposite Renata Tebaldi, Bergonzi managed to steal the show: he brought down the house after Hagenbach’s Act IV aria.

At The Met I heard his superb Radames, once with Lucine Amara and once with Martina Arroyo. It was with Arroyo that he triumphed as Verdi’s ERNANI in a stellar performance that also featured Sherrill Milnes and Ruggero Raimondi. He was a generous-toned and poetic Andrea Chenier in a performance where Renata Tebaldi struggled vocally, only to cast off all reserve in the final duet where she and Bergonzi thrilled us with their passionate outpouring of sound. And the tenor managed to convey the youthful vigor and tenderness of Alfredo Germont opposite the moving Violetta of Jeannette Pilou.

Listening to a matinee broadcast of TOSCA in 1975, I was dismayed to hear Bergonzi struggling with the top notes and fighting a losing battle, though he sang on to the end. He took a year and a half off (at least from the Met) returning in November 1976 as Radames opposite Rita Hunter. After a somewhat cautious but still impressively handled “Celeste Aida” Bergonzi went on to give a spectacular performance with some of the most generous singing I ever heard.

And such generosity won him great acclaim in 1979 when he returned to a signature role, Riccardo in BALLO IN MASCHERA. His phenomenally sustained top notes, sometimes attained thru sheer will-power, and his matchless phrasing drew enormous ovations on both evenings that I attended: one performance with Teresa Zylis-Gara and another with Carol Neblett. In 1982 Bergonzi was still on impressive form in FORZA DEL DESTINO, and in 1985 he scored a grand success in a concert performance of Verdi’s GIOVANNA D’ARCO opposite Margaret Price and Sherrill Milnes. In every one of these performances, whatever slight misgivings one might have, his ever-persuasive style carried the day.

But there was a final small chapter in my Bergonzi story: eight years after the MILLER that I walked out on, he appeared at James Levine’s 25th Met Anniversary gala, singing the aria from LUISA MILLER and the trio from I LOMBARDI. Massive demonstrations of love rained down on him and people raved about his longevity but for me, despite admiring his courage, he was a shadow of his glorious self. 

But, I have lots of recordings (both commercial and live) to keep my favorite tenor’s voice ever in my ear. His early Decca aria recital has never – in my opinion – been matched by any other tenor’s, though some have come very close. Both his commercial BALLO recordings are superb. His Duke in RIGOLETTO (opposite Scotto and Fisher-Dieskau) is a fine document of Verdi tenor singing. In TROVATORE, PAGLIACCI, BOHEME and DON CARLO, he is The King. I deeply love his BUTTERFLY with Tebaldi, his TOSCA with a voice-in-peril Callas (she still has some magical moments though); and his lovely TRAVIATA with Montserrat Caballe. And I am particularly fond of Bergonzi’s splendid performance as Edgardo in the RCA LUCIA with Anna Moffo.   

Carlo Bergonzi sings Tosti’s ‘Ideale’ here.

Hail and farewell, Maestro. If there’s a heaven, you can teach the angels how to sing.