Piero Pauli; "ARIAS"; Verdi/Franchetti/Cilea/Boito/Wagner/Puccini/Giordano

Piero Pauli---tenor
Early 1930's
"Del labbro"; FALSTAFF; Giuseppe Verdi
"Studenti"; GERMANIA; Alberto Franchetti
"No la mia favorita"; ADRIANA LECOUVREUR; Francesco Cilea
"No, no chuidar"; GERMANIA; Alberto Franchetti
"Dai campi"; MEFISTOFELE; Arrigo Boito
"Winterstürme"; DIE WALKÜRE; Richard Wagner (Sung in Italian);
"È la solita storia"; (Federico's Lament; L'ARLESIANA; Francesco Cilea
"Firenze"; GIANNI SCHICCHI; Giacomo Puccini
"Giunto sul passo"; MEFISTOFELE; Arrigo Boito
"Forma ideal"; MEFISTOFELE; Arrigo Boito
"Mia madre"; FEDORA; Umberto Giordano
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0 July 1898 Barcelona – 19 April 1967 San Piero a Grado
Born Pere Paulí, he worked in a bank and sang in an excellent choir, where his voice was trained by the well-known teacher J&uuacute;lia Cerdà. In 1929, Paulí had his first solo concerts in small venues. He got the possibility to sing for both Maria Barrientos and Francisco Viñas, and it was Viñas who advised him to go and study in Milano, and wrote him a commendatory letter. Paulí left the bank, and took lessons in Milano with Alberto Caffo – just from April to October 1929, then he was ready for his debut at the Politeama Rossetti in Trieste as Faust in Mefistofele. Surprisingly, His Master's Voice hired him already before his debut, in September 1929, to sing Cavaradossi in a complete Tosca with Carmen Melis and Apollo Granforte, and the orchestra of La Scala. From the very beginning, Paulí italianized his name and became Piero Pauli.
Pauli's next stage role was Rodolfo; he sang it in December 1929 in Pavia, on 1 January 1930 already at La Scala, and in February in Monte Carlo, where he stayed for a few weeks and also sang Boito's Faust again, as well as Pinkerton and Duca, 22 performances total. In April, he was Faust in Palermo, in September Pinkerton at the Teatro Donizetti in Bergamo.

In January 1931, he sang his first Cavaradossi on stage (Teatro Duse, Bologna, and thereafter Teatro Filarmonico, Verona), as well as Pinkerton in Nice and at the Regio in Torino, where he also sang Cavaradossi again. In April, he recorded another complete opera that he had not sung on stage before, nor would he ever sing it: Carmen with Gabriella Besanzoni. In September, he made his debut at La Fenice in Venice, as Pinkerton.

1932 started in Cannes, where he sang Rinuccio; he spent the rest of January at the Teatro Regio in Parma, singing Boito's Faust (with Nazzareno De Angelis and Pia Tassinari), and in Como, where he added Luigi to Rinuccio, two roles that he also sang in Lucca in May, along with Cavaradossi. Tosca in Pavia and Torino (Teatro Regio), Mefistofele in Modena and Bari (Teatro Petruzzelli), and Madama Butterfly in Pisa was his schedule for the rest of the year.

In 1934, he was Rodolfo in Torino in January, and premiered Baldo by Giovanni Cicogna at the Filarmonico in Verona on March 15th. Contemporary opera would also become his specialty at the EIAR, the national Italian radio that hired him that year, for many seasons to come. His first radio operas were Ghismonda by Renzo Bianchi for EIAR Roma in August, and Prodaná nevěsta (where he sang Jeník) for EIAR Torino in November.

In January 1935 in Como, Pauli debuted the "other" Faust, the one by Gounod, and sang Rinuccio at La Scala once more. The rest of the year was devoted to radio work: Primavera fiorentina by Arrigo Pedrollo, La ghibellina by Bianchi, Goyescas by Enrique Granados, and Il tabarro.

He sang more opera on stage in 1938: Khovanshchina at the Carlo Felice in Genova in January and at the San Carlo in Naples in February, Miranda by Pietro Canonica in Rome in April (with Tito Gobbi and Giuseppe Taddei), Madama Butterfly in Livorno in December. In between, it was radio time: La morte di Frine by Lodovico Rocca, another Lucrezia, Suton by Serbian composer Stevan Hristić (in Italian, of course, as Crepuscolo), Il tabarro and Gianni Schicchi, La favola d'Orfeo by Alfredo Casella, L'amante in trappola by Pedrollo.

Although the termination of his radio work would now have left him more time for staged opera, the frequency of his performances did not increase. In 1942, he appeared in La bohème in Catania in January, and in Dallapiccola's Volo di notte in Rome in November. In 1943, he sang in the theater but not on stage: Beethoven's Ninth and Lorenzo Perosi's oratorio La risurrezione di Cristo, both at the Comunale in Bologna in April. In 1944 and 1945, his only role was Boito's Faust, which he sang in Venice and Trieste. And in 1946, he sang Cavaradossi and Alfredo at the Teatro Grattacielo in Genova in February. There, he noticed the first symptoms of an heart ailment that forced him to entirely retire. He moved to the village of San Piero a Grado near Pisa, where his daughter worked as a physician."; historicaltenors.com; (edited)