Background
Baccaloni was born in Rome on April 14, 1900, the son of Joaquin Baccaloni, a building contractor, and Ferminia Desideri.
(Very good recording by headliners at The Metropolitan Opera.)
Very good recording by headliners at The Metropolitan Opera.
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(Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus, Giuseppe Antonic...)
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus, Giuseppe Antonicelli - Great Opera Performances: Puccini: Manon Lescaut, Disc EX, Case EX, Format: Music CD, Naxos Records. Classical music CD release from Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus, Giuseppe Antonicelli with the album Great Opera Performances: Puccini: Manon Lescaut. Released on the label Naxos Records. Classical music CD. This hard to find pre-owned music CD is fully guaranteed. This is a two CD set.
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Baccaloni was born in Rome on April 14, 1900, the son of Joaquin Baccaloni, a building contractor, and Ferminia Desideri.
His musical training began at the San Salvatore in Lauro School in Rome when he was five. In 1906 he began a five-year period of service as chorister at the Sistine Chapel, where he received further vocal training. Soon after his twelfth birthday his voice changed, and he temporarily abandoned music to study architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, graduating in 1920. These studies were interrupted during World War I, when Baccaloni served in the signal corps of the Italian army. Giuseppe Kaschmann, a baritone with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, convinced Baccaloni that his destiny lay in singing. Baccaloni studied voice with Kaschmann for two years (1920 - 1922).
He made his opera debut in April 1922 as Bartolo in The Barber of Seville at the Teatro Adriano in Rome. He served his operatic apprenticeship with various Italian companies during the next four years. In 1926, Arturo Toscanini engaged him for Milan's La Scala, where Baccaloni remained for fourteen years. At Toscanini's suggestion, Baccaloni began assuming basso buffo roles.
Following his first tour of South America in 1930, he made his debut in the United States with the Chicago Civic Opera in 1930-1931, when his talent passed unnoticed. More eventful were his appearances at the festivals at Glyndebourne, England, and Salzburg, Austria, from 1936 to 1939 and his return to America in October 1938, when he made his debut with the San Francisco Opera as Leporello. His first appearances with the Metropolitan Opera took place in Philadelphia on Dec. 3, 1940, and in New York City four days later, as Bartolo in The Marriage of Figaro. He scored a personal triumph in New York City on December 21 in the title role of Don Pasquale, an opera that had been revived for him.
For more than two decades Baccaloni was the principal basso buffo at the Metropolitan Opera and was heard 297 times in New York City and 146 times on tour, in fifteen roles, though his repertory consisted of more than 150 roles in five languages, in serious as well as comedic parts. During his years at the Metropolitan Opera, Baccaloni made many successful appearances with other opera companies in concerts in America and Europe. At the San Francisco Opera he was heard in the seasons from 1941 to 1954 and from 1958 to 1960. He last performed at the Metropolitan Opera as Fra Melitone in La forza del destino on February 14, 1962.
Baccaloni made his film debut in a nonsinging role in Full of Life (1957). He subsequently appeared in nonsinging character roles in films such as Merry Andrew (1958), Rock-a-Bye Baby (1958), Fanny (1961), and The Pigeon That Took Rome (1962). In 1962 he retired to New York City, where he died.
(Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus, Giuseppe Antonic...)
(Very good recording by headliners at The Metropolitan Opera.)
(Arturo Toscanini Conducts Puccini's La Boheme. RCA Victor...)
((La Scala) (1928))
(VINYL RECORD)
On November 17, 1928, Baccaloni married Elena Svilarova; they had no children.