Giuseppe Taddei (1916 - 2010)

Depois de Simionato – cuja morte será objecto de um digno post (keep cool, Raul) - e Rothenberger, é a vez de Taddei entregar a alma ao criador.

Giuseppe Taddei apenas teve como rival contemporâneo, no seu repertório, o enormíssimo Tito Gobbi. Contudo, Taddei era senhor de uma voz mais esbelta e luminosa.

Pessoalmente, será sempre um dos mais ilustres mozartianos. O seu Leporello foi o primeiro que escutei, tendo-me conquistado de imediato! Durante anos, a personagem do criado, em Don Giovanni, era a minha predilecta. De facto, na célebre leitura de Giulini, Wächter é ofuscado pelo génio do italiano. Aliás, de memória, não me ocorre um servo mais vil e canalha, no que se refere à minha extensa discografia d’A Ópera (que já conta com 44 entradas).

Paralelamente, também sob a batuta de Giulini, Taddei perpetuou um dos mais extraordinário Figaro da discografia, apenas ladeado por Terfel.

Porém, o Barítono genovês brilhou no repertório italiano, particularmente em Verdi – o seu Falstaff, que marcou a sua estreia tardia no Met, à beira dos 70 anos... -, e Puccini. Neste último, o leitor mais avisado saberá das minhas reservas... Gobbi batia-o aos pontos, no Scarpia.

RIP, Giuseppe.

«Giuseppe Taddei, a distinguished Italian baritone who made his Metropolitan Opera debut to glowing notices in 1985 at the astonishing age of 69 (though he would gladly have sung there decades earlier, he said, if only the Met had asked him nicely), died on Wednesday at his home in Rome. He was 93 and had continued his operatic career until he was well into his 70s.

Mr. Taddei’s family confirmed the death to Italian news agencies. Information on survivors was not available.

Born in Genoa on June 26, 1916, Mr. Taddei made his operatic debut in 1936, as the Herald in a production of Wagner’s “Lohengrin” in Rome. In the decades that followed, he performed on many of the great opera stages of Europe, including those of the Vienna State Opera, La Scala and Covent Garden.

In the 1950s, Mr. Taddei appeared in the United States with the San Francisco and Dallas Civic Operas; he was also long known to listeners here through his many recordings. In the 1960s, he sang in New York in concert performances.

But until Sept. 25, 1985, when he stepped onto the stage at Lincoln Center in the title role of Verdi’s “Falstaff,” Mr. Taddei had never sung at the Met. The production, conducted by James Levine, also starred Adriana Maliponte and Brent Ellis.

At his curtain call, The New York Times reported, Mr. Taddei received “a rafter-shaking ovation.”

Opera exacts a great toll on the voice. Singers often retire in their 50s, at least from weightier fare. Appearing at a major opera house in one’s late 60s is highly unusual; making a debut at that age, breathtakingly so. To do so to the kind of rapturous reviews Mr. Taddei received is almost beyond contemplation.

What apparently stood Mr. Taddei in good stead was the Italian bel canto tradition — the lighter, less forceful style of singing in which he had been trained — which can let its practitioners extend their careers beyond the usual retirement age.

In all, Mr. Taddei performed with the Met 21 times. Besides Falstaff, which he sang in 1985 and 1986, he appeared as Dr. Dulcamara in “L’Elisir d’Amore,” by Donizetti, in 1988.

Reviewing Mr. Taddei’s Met debut in The Times, Donal Henahan wrote: “His Falstaff, not only wittily acted and fully formed, was astonishingly well sung. The voice is not exactly plummy these days, but it retains a wonderfully liquid quality in lyric passages.”

If Mr. Taddei could sing like that at 69, then why had the Met not signed him in even plummier days?

As Mr. Taddei explained in a 1985 interview with The Times, the reasons centered on diplomacy, or rather what he saw as the lack of it. In 1951, he said, Rudolf Bing, then the Met’s general manager, asked him to audition. That did not sit well with Mr. Taddei, who was already a star in Europe. He declined Mr. Bing’s request.

In 1958, Mr. Taddei said, the Met tried to engage him again, at $600 a week. That did not sit well with Mr. Taddei, who asked for more money. The Met declined his request.

A quarter-century went by. Then, in the early 1980s, after Mr. Taddei sang a well-received Falstaff at the Salzburg Festival in Austria, Mr. Levine, the Met’s music director, approached him. He offered Mr. Taddei the part of Fra Melitone in Verdi’s “Forza del Destino” — a role typically billed sixth from the top.

That did not sit well with Mr. Taddei. As he told The Times, “I said thank you, but coming for the very first time, I think I should come as protagonista.”

And thus, as Falstaff, Mr. Taddei went onstage a world-renowned singer and came back a star.»