Roberto Stagno

Roberto Stagno (Italian pronunciation: [roˈbɛrto ˈstaɲɲo]; 18 October 1840 [some sources give 1836 as his birth year] – 26 April 1897), was a prominent Italian opera tenor. He became an important interpreter of verismo music when it burst on to the operatic scene during the 1890s; but he also possessed an agile bel canto technique which he employed in operas dating from earlier periods. In 1890, he created the pivotal verismo role of Turiddu.

Stagno (real name Vincenzo Andrioli) was born in Palermo, Sicily, into a family with connections to the minor nobility.

He studied in Milan in Northern Italy and made his operatic debut in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1862. His career breakthrough came three years later, however, when he substituted successfully for Italy's most celebrated dramatic tenor, Enrico Tamberlik, in a Madrid performance of Robert le diable.

During the next three decades, Stagno performed in a variety of operas at major opera houses in Spain, Italy, France and Russia, building and then consolidating his reputation as one of Europe's leading tenors.

Stagno was popular, too, in Argentina, where he appeared initially in 1879, and he also performed for one entire season (1883–84) in the United States, at the New York Metropolitan Opera where he sang leading roles in the company premieres of several core works of the Italian reperoty including Il Trovatore, I Puritani, Rigoletto, and La Gioconda. Unfortunately for Stagno, his time in New York was to prove shorter than he would have liked: American audiences expressed reservations about his singing because of its pronounced and persistent vibrato.

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