Giovanni Zenatello

Giovanni Zenatello (22 February 1876 – 11 February 1949) was an Italian opera singer. Born in Verona, he enjoyed an international career as a dramatic tenor of the first rank. Otello became his most famous operatic role but he sang a wide repertoire. In 1904, he created the part of Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly.

Zenatello showed musical promise from a young age. His singing teacher in Verona originally trained him as a baritone but he never felt comfortable in this range and later switched to the higher tenor register. Nonetheless, it was as a baritone that he made his professional debut at Belluno in 1898. His tenor debut—as Canio—did not come until the following year, at Naples.

Zenatello's operatic career gathered momentum during the early years of the 20th century, and on 17 February 1904 he created the role of Pinkerton in the world première of Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly at La Scala, Milan. La Scala was Italy's leading opera house, and he remained a member of its company of singers until 1907.

He also sang at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, in 1905/06 and 1908/09; at the Manhattan Opera House in 1907 to 1910; and with the New York Metropolitan Opera company, on tour, replacing Enrico Caruso, in 1909. He was a member of the Boston Opera Company from 1909 to 1914 and sang often, too, in South America and Mexico and in various cities of continental Europe.

Zenatello's voice had matured into that of a clarion-voiced dramatic tenor during his La Scala years, and he succeeded Francesco Tamagno (1850–1905) as the world's greatest exponent of Giuseppe Verdi's Otello. He performed this extremely taxing role more than 300 times, beginning in 1908, and recorded highly acclaimed extracts from the work on 78-rpm discs.

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