Mattia Battistini

Born on February 27, 1856, in Contigliano near Rome, baritone Mattia Battistini began vocal training in the capital under Eugenio Terziani before continuing with Vencesleo Persichini. His professional bow came at Teatro Argentina in 1878 when he stepped into Donizetti’s La favorita with barely a day’s preparation; the performance succeeded, leading to engagements across northern Italy in Il Trovatore, La forza del destino, Rigoletto, Les Huguenots, L’Africaine, I Puritani, Lucia di Lammermoor, Ernani, and additional operas over the ensuing seasons. In 1881 he sailed to South America, pausing afterward in Madrid and Seville to appear as Figaro in The Barber of Seville. Three years later he reached Covent Garden, where the reception remained modest because a youthful artist could scarcely overshadow established figures such as Sembrich, Marconi, and Edwuard de Reszke.

Massenet, captivated by the timbre, revised the tenor part of Werther expressly for him. From 1893 onward Battistini spent extended portions of each season in Russia, where the St. Petersburg roster already featured Marcella Sembrich, Fernando de Lucia, Adamo Didur, and other leading singers of the era. Thereafter his appearances became an unbroken series of triumphs rivaled by few in operatic annals. He performed several Russian works—Glinka’s Russlan and Ludmilla, Rubinstein’s The Demon, and Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades and Eugene Onegin—delivering his lines in Italian while colleagues retained the original Russian. His final staged appearances occurred in Padua in 1921, again as Rigoletto; he sustained recital and concert activity until 1927 and died on November 7, 1928, at Colle Baccaro near Rieti.

Battistini possessed one of the most exquisite baritone instruments captured on disc, notable for its agility and for the seamless crescendos and diminuendos he produced across every register. The lower range proved comparatively fragile, failing to project strongly on recordings; in several instances, including his version of “Eri tu” from Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera, he raised the lowest notes an octave. Already forty-five when he commenced recording in 1902, he continued until 1924 at the age of sixty-seven, leaving more than one hundred selections, each offering lessons for any vocalist. The earliest of these documents, issued on Romophon 82008-2, exemplify supreme vocalism, with the Eugene Onegin aria reaching its apex as he sustains an unwritten high F that swells and then fades into silence. He revisited many arias across his discography; although earlier takes display greater vocal firmness, later ones reveal scant erosion of technical command, making the steadfast quality of his artistry the most striking feature of the singer long hailed as the “King of the Baritones.”