Giovanni Polese

Giovanni Polese (1873 – January 1952) was an Italian operatic baritone who had an active international singing career from 1894-1928. He achieved the height of his success in the United States in the years 1908-1916 in the cities of Boston, Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia, and again from 1926-1928 in Chicago. While he sang a broad repertoire from the French, German, and Italian repertoires, he was most celebrated for his performances in the operas of Giuseppe Verdi. His voice is preserved on more than 20 recordings made by Edison Records.

Born in Venice, Polese studied singing in his native city and made his professional singing debut performing there in a concert in 1892. He made his opera debut in 1894 at the Teatro Unione in Viterbo as Barnaba in Amilcare Ponchielli's La Gioconda. He was also heard that year as Don Carlo in Ernani in Viterbo; as Enrico in Gaetano Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor and Tonio in Ruggero Leoncavallo's Pagliacci at the Teatro Andreani in Mantova; and in a small role in Alberto Franchetti's Cristoforo Colombo at the Teatro Regio in Turin. In 1895 he returned to Turin to sing Enrico to the Lucia of Regina Pinkert, and perform Lescaut in Giacomo Puccini's Manon Lescaut. He returned to Turin several more times during his career, notably creating the role of Count Narval in Arturo Buzzi Peccia's La forza d'amore in 1897.

Over the next thirteen years, Polese performed leading opera roles all over Europe. He performed in operas in Athens, Bari, Bucharest, Cadiz, Cagliari, Cremona, Florence, Forlì, Genoa, Lemberg, Lonigo, Lisbon, Macerata, Madrid, Modena, Novara, Odessa, Palermo, Parma, Reggio Emilia, Rome, Seville, Trieste, Udine, and Vienna among other cities. Outside of Europe, he made appearances in Argentina (1901), Chile (1898), Egypt (1904–1906), and Mexico (1906). Some of the roles he performed during these years were Albert in Werther, Alfio in Cavalleria rusticana, Alphonse in La favorite, Amonasro in Aida, Antonio in Linda di Chamounix, Athanaël in Thaïs, Caoudal in Sapho, Conte di Luna in Il trovatore, De Siriex in Fedora, Don Carlo in La forza del destino, Dr Malatesta in Don Pasquale, Escamillo in Carmen, Figaro in The Barber of Seville, Friedrich of Telramund in Lohengrin, Ford in Falstaff, Gerard in Andrea Chenier, Germont in La traviata, Guglielmo in Le Villi, the High Priest of Dagon in Samson and Delilah, Kurwenal in Tristan und Isolde, Kyoto in Iris, Lescaut in Jules Massenet's Manon, Marcello in La bohème, Nevers in Les Huguenots, Renato in Un ballo in maschera, Riccardo Forth in I puritani, Scarpia in Tosca, Sharpless in Madama Butterfly, Silvio in Pagliacci, Valentin in Faust, Wolfram in Tannhäuser, and the title roles in Guillaume Tell and Rigoletto.

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