Ferruccio Tagliavini

Ferruccio Tagliavini (pronounced ; 14 August 1913 – 28 January 1995) was an Italian operatic tenor mainly active in the 1940s and 1950s. Tagliavini was hailed as the heir apparent to Tito Schipa and Beniamino Gigli in the lyric-opera repertory due to the exceptional beauty of his voice, but he did not sustain his great early promise across the full span of his career.

Tagliavini was born in Cavazzoli, Reggio Emilia and studied in Parma with Italo Brancucci and in Florence and with Amedeo Bassi, a well-known dramatic verismo and Wagnerian Italian tenor of the pre-World War I era whose voice (as recorded) could not be more unlike Tagliavini's (see M.Scott, The Record of Singing, 1978). It was also in Florence that he made his professional debut in 1938 as Rodolfo in La bohème.

He swiftly gained recognition as one of the leading tenori di grazia of his time in operas such as The Barber of Seville, L'elisir d'amore, Don Pasquale, La sonnambula, Lucia di Lammermoor, Rigoletto, La traviata, Manon, Werther, L'amico Fritz and L'arlesiana.

Debuts at many of the world's major opera houses ensued. They included: La Scala, Milan, in 1942; the Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires, in 1946; the Metropolitan Opera, New York City, in 1947 (as Rodolfo in La bohème); the San Francisco Opera in 1948; the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, in 1950; and, finally, the Paris Opéra in 1951.