Giovanni Battista Lamperti (24 June 1839 – 18 March 1910) was an Italian singing teacher and son of the singing teacher Francesco Lamperti. He is the author of The Technics of Bel Canto (1905) and source for Vocal Wisdom: Maxims of Giovanni Battista Lamperti (1931).
Giovanni Battista Lamperti was born in 1839 in Milan to Italian singing teacher Francesco Lamperti. He was a chorister at the great cathedral and studied voice and piano at the conservatory. A student and later accompanist for his father at the conservatory, Giovanni knew better than anyone else the method his father taught (which he claimed descended from the great castrato-teacher Antonio Bernacchi). Appropriating it for teaching his own students, Giovanni also began teaching voice at the Milan conservatory and then for 20 years in Dresden, followed by Berlin. His preferred teaching arrangement was having three or four students present at each lesson: each would get their turn while the others observed and learned thereby. He was said to be a strict, exacting instructor not given to flattery, but who enthusiastically praised his students upon exceptional achievement. Many of Giovanni’s students became international opera stars including Irene Abendroth, Marcella Sembrich, Ernestine Schumann-Heink, Paul Bulss, Roberto Stagno, David Bispham and Franz Nachbaur. See: List of music students by teacher: K to M#Giovanni Battista Lamperti.
There was famously bad blood between the elder and younger Lamperti, eventually resulting in a bitter schism between the studios and followers of Francesco and Giovanni. A pupil of both Lampertis described the hostile situation thus: