This is Pippo! The opera playboy! And he was also the greatest tenor ever! (Well, many of you probably disagree, but it is another story. For now let it be.)As all of you know on March 3, Giuseppe Di Stefano passed away. He was 86. Unfortunatelly I couldn't pay him the deserved hommage here on the blog, but I'm fulfilling this gap. Better late than never.
So, I'm posting 3 of his albums released on the late fifties and early sixties. They are 2 opera recitals and one about Italian songs, which is probably the most extraordinary recording of Neapolitan and Sicilian songs he made.
By paying this hommage to Pippo I could never forget a person who was a huge Pippo fan and from whom I inherited this taste for him. This person was my father, who coincidently, was born on the same day as Di Stefano, July 24, but one year earlier. May both of you rest in peace.
As an appetizer I'm providing below a link to download something that you'll never, ever, will hear again in your entire life. His performance on "Salut! Demeure", by Gounod's Faust, recorded live on the Metropolitan Opera House in New York in 1950.
About this performance, Rudolf Bing, the Metropolitan Opera general manager at the time, and who was clearly a Di Stefano's "enemy" (for reasons that for now I won't be mentioning), said about the High C followed by a pianissimo, that it had been the most beautiful sound he had ever heard coming out from a human being mouth. And this man had under contract all the great singers of the time, and you know, some of the greatest ever. So, enjoy it.
Gounod: Faust
Salut! Demeure
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