Italo Tajo

Although his handsome bass voice lacked the weight often anticipated within a low-ranged singer, Italo Tajo produced an effective career predicated on his excellent grasp of style and character. Especially adept in Mozart, Tajo performed an array of bass individuals and demonstrated an affinity for comic assignments. Tajo eventually used a position over the opera faculty at Cincinnati, however in his sixties he came back towards the Chicago and Metropolitan Opera levels to execute such assignments simply because Alcindoro/Benoit (La Bohème), Don Pasquale, as well as the Sacristan (Tosca). Tajo’s initial name produced from the actual fact that, of five kids, he was the only person to have already been blessed in his indigenous Italy. He sang within a cathedral choir in Pinerolo whenever a simple guy; the director’s recommendation that Tajo research seriously was fulfilled with opposition from his dad, who envisioned for him a profession as a health care provider. When Tajo’s passion for music persisted, his dad surrendered and offered his authorization, clearing just how for Italo to review with Nilde Stinche-Bertozzi in close by Turin. When he was 20, Tajo produced his debut in the Teatro Regio in Turin performing Fafner (Das Rheingold) beneath the path of Fritz Busch. Busch was sufficiently impressed to request Tajo towards the Glyndebourne Celebration that same calendar year to serve as an understudy and chorus member. When British bass Norman Allin was unavailable for the first-ever documenting of Le nozze di Figaro, Tajo was asked to sing Don Bartolo’s La vendetta, an amazing responsibility for therefore youthful a vocalist. His success resulted in his being involved for the 1936 Edinburgh Celebration. During WWII, Tajo discharged his armed forces duty being a grenadier safeguard in Rome, an project that afforded him period for the analysis of new assignments and for shows on the Rome Opera. Among a number of important assignments undertaken throughout that period was the physician in the initial Italian functionality of Wozzeck. Following war’s end, he sang at La Scala in L’amore dei Tre Re, Boris Godunov, Boito’s Mefistofele, Gounod’s Faust, Don Pasquale, L’Elisir d’amore, and Der Rosenkavalier. In Italy, he also made an appearance in several seldom performed functions by Giordano, Wolf-Ferrari, and Pizzetti, aswell as premiering functions by Nono, Berio, and Malipiero. On the other hand, his American debut acquired taken place using the Chicago Opera when he sang Ramfis within a 1946 functionality of Aida (he previously also documented the Ruler with Serafin that same calendar year in Rome). His Chicago Ramfis was defined with the Tribune as “a higher priest mind and shoulders greater than his minions, using a voice abundant with quality and filled with operatic guarantee.” Tajo’s SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA debut emerged in 1948 when his Basilio and Leporello encountered recollections of Baccaloni but still triumphed. Afterwards that period, on Dec 28, Tajo produced his Metropolitan Opera debut, earning strong acceptance for his Basilio and, a couple of days later on, for his portrayal of Mozart’s Figaro. As period passed, nevertheless, critics seen with diminishing favour his overactive stage persona and a inclination to growl the music “from the medial side of his mouth area” instead of focusing the tone of voice in a typical manner. Tajo’s past due performances in personality tasks were non-etheless ripely amusing and unfailingly unforgettable.