AURELIANO PERTILE
TENOR
NOVEMBER 09, 1885

‘I still thought of my friend’s famous uncle as the large, muffled-up gentleman in a scarf, when onto the stage came what seemed to me an almost godlike figure who proceeded to sing as I had never heard anyone sing before. My companion, the audience, the very theatre itself almost ceased to exist. I sat there riveted, with never a thought of leaving, until the curtain fell for the last time.’  Tito Gobbi^[1]

So wrote Tito Gobbi, reminiscing years later, well before he had even contemplated becoming a singer, about a friend who convinced the boy Tito, to come with him and hear ‘his uncle’ sing.

It is telling in that Aureliano Pertile was a singer who captivated the audience with his singing, acting and presence.

Born on the 9 November 1885 in the town of Montagnana,^[2] just seventeen days after the town’s other great tenor, Giovanni Martinelli, one wonders if there had been something in the elements at their conception or birth that contributed to this mediaeval walled town in the Veneto producing two great tenors in such a short space of time.

Pertile studied in Padua and debuted at the age of 26 in 1911 performing in Vicenza in Flotow’s Martha. He attracted notice first in Naples in the 1913-1914 season at San Carlo in Naples in Madama Butterfly Und Carmen. further success followed in Rome 1915-16 and finally La Scala 1916 in Francesca da Rimini, and it was La Scala that was to remain his stalwart home opera house throughout his career.^[3] From 1922 to 1937 he sang at La Scala every year.^[4] His had great success in 1922 in Mefistofele, and thereafter became a favourite with Toscanini. ‘Pertile was particularly suited to verismo roles which needed instant emotional engagement, and in many ways hinted at tenors to come. Toscanini appreciated his musicianship and no-nonsense attitude to the composer's notes’ wrote John Potter.^[5] After 1937 he performed less and at the end of the second world war he retired.^[6] It is also a possibility that his connection with Toscanini was a liability in Fascist Italy.

What is certain though is he sang with ‘burning sincerity’, that he was ‘capable of the most refined, imaginative and memorable art, a voice of unique character, and a communicator whose utterance goes (in Beethoven’s phrase) ‘from the heart to the heart.’^[7] He excelled in the verismo roles; Chenier, Canio, Maurizio (Adriana Lecouvreur), Paolo (Francesca da Rimini), Turiddu; but also increasingly took on the dramatic Verdi and some Wagner roles such as Manrico, Riccardo (Un ballo in maschera),Lohengrin and Stolzing (Meistersinger). Although to some critics his voice was not beautiful or powerful, ‘and the tone, rather thick in the middle register, took on nasal and guttural inflections’^[8], he possessed in lyrical moments a vibrant and incisive quality, ideal for verismo roles. ‘Pertile stood out because of his fine enunciation, variety of expression and unusual interpretative gifts’.^[9]

What is also certain is the respect that later tenors accorded the singer and artist. To quote directly from the witness of Steane, the great Italian tenors of the following decades owed him a debt:

’Pertile was to be my model, my ideal, throughout all my long career’ (Bergonzi)

‘Pertile was a singer who influenced all tenors, in my case in a way that was constant and decisive.’ (Corelli)

‘To him goes the gratitude of all tenors who could draw upon the fountain of the purest Italian lyricism.’ (Del Monaco)

‘Caruso, Pertile, Schipa, Gigli … and then … who?’ (Di Stefano)

‘a serious, conscientious and musical artist … a technique all his own, inimitable.’ (Pavarotti)^[10]

If the statements of these tenors are taken as a whole, we know the measure of Pertile’s greatness.

Following his retirement from the stage in 1946, he continued to teach singing at the Milan Conservatorium until his death in 1952.^[11]

As a conclusion, we can agree with the anecdote recored by Ethan Mordden.

‘Who was Aureliano Pertile?’

‘The greatest purely Italian spinto tenor of the (twentieth) century.’^[12]