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Rigoletto - Toti dal Monte & Luigi Montesanto, 1933

2,919 views · Published 5 April 2012 · 4:32 · Indexed 6 November 2026

Channel: 240252 · 2012 · Music

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Lassù nel cielo (In Yonder Heaven) -- Giuseppe Verdi „Rigoletto, act 3 sung by Toti dal Monte, Soprano & Luigi Montesanto, Baritone with Members of La Scala, Milan, conducted by Franco Ghione, Victor 1933 (Japan)

NOTE: Verdi's "Rigoletto" had its premiere in La Fenice, Venice, in 1851. That concoction of beautiful sublime music and unbelievable melodrama made up one of the most famous operas in the world.  The story about the Duke's jester and his naive daughter Gilda, has its tragic finale in the 3rd act, when in one of the most sublime death-scene arias ever wtitten, Gilda bids farewell to her father, promising, she will soon be in heaven and protect him.

Luigi MONTESANTO ( b. Palermo , 1887; d. Milan , 1954) Italian baritone, pupil of Santorno in Palermo. Montesanto began his operatic work as a youth in small roles at the Massimo in Palermo. His debut in substantial roles took place at the Biondo in Palermo, 1908, as Escamillo in ''Carmen'' and Silvio in ''Pagliacci''. After singing throughout Italy, Montesanto appeared at the Colón (Buenos Aires) as Jochanaan in Strauss's ''Salome'' and then with the Metropolitan, creating there Luigi in the world premiere of Puccini's ''Il Tabarro''. His career also included La Scala, the Teatro Costanzi, and the Chicago Opera. He taught in later years, his primary pupil having been Giuseppe Di Stefano. 

Toti dal MONTE (nee Antonietta Meneghel in Mogliano, province of Treviso in 1893 --  d. 1975) -  celebrated Italian soprano with a sweet lyric voice. She was Arturo Toscanini's favourite artist. She is best remembered today for her performance as Cio-cio-san in Puccini's Madama Butterfly because she recorded this role complete in 1939 with the star tenor Beniamino Gigli as Pinkerton. Dal Monte made her debut at La Scala, Milan at the age of 17 in Zandonai's Francesca da Rimini. She was an immediate success, and her clear 'nightingale-like' voice came to be highly appreciated throughout the world. Her best-known roles included the bel canto parts of Amina (in Bellini's La sonnambula), Lucia (in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor) and Gilda (in Verdi's Rigoletto). In 1924, she was engaged by the diva Nellie Melba to be one of the star singers of an Italian opera company that Melba was organising to make a tour of Australia. She proved a popular and critical success on the tour, and there was no rivalry between the ageing Melba and the much younger Dal Monte. Rather, they threw bouquets after each other's performances. On 12 January 1929 at La Scala she created the role of Rosalina, which was specifically written for her, in the world premiere of Umberto Giordano's Il re. She travelled and performed in all major opera theatres of the world, including Covent Garden and Metropolitan Opera. In 1945 she retired from the operatic stage, however, she continued to work in the theatre and appeared in a number of films, of which the best known is perhaps her last, Enrico Maria Salerno's Anonimo veneziano, a 1970 story about a musician at La Fenice. "La Toti" died in 1975 at the age of 81, in Pieve di Soligo, as a result of circulatory disorders.

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