TAGLIAFICO: half a century of opera

 

TAGLIAFICO, [Joseph] Dieudonné (b Toulon 1 January 1821; d 33 Avenue de Beaulieu, Nice 27 January 1900)

 

He wasn’t Lablache. He wasn’t Ronconi. He wasn’t a star bass. Or a star baritone. He wasn’t a comprimario. He was somewhere in the middle of all that. But Diedonné Tagliafico, the slim, likeable, French bass-baritone did have a full and very fine career in the great opera-houses of the world for a extraordinarily large part of the Victorian era.

 He was born in Toulon, out of wedlock. His father was one Laurent Honoré Augustin Marie Tagliafico (b Savona 11 October 1784), a taxation director in the Royal department of Finance, his mother one Mlle Cécile Claire Méric. He was officially legitimised the year after his birth, which may mean the two later married. I presume it was his father’s position which secured him a place in the Collège royale Henri IV, from where he graduated, with a prize in philosophy, in 1838. 

 

He had worked his way into the musical world by 1841. As a lyricist, he supplied the words for a scena ‘Myrtha, où la reine des Willis’, music by Jules de Glimes, and a performer, I see him at the concert of MM Herz and Labarre (February) singing two of Glimes' songs, at the soirée of the Escudier brothers ('on a admiré aussi [la voix] d'un jeune homme, M Tagliafico, qui promet à l'Opéra ou aux Italiens un excellent chanteur. Il a produit beaucoup d'effet dans une composition très remarquable de M de Glimes’) and at concert given by Messrs Mühlenfeldt and Willent, ‘Sa voix de basse est agréable, ductile et imperssionante’ nodded the reviewer after his performance of de Glimes’s ‘La Tombe et la rose’ and Meyerbeer’s ‘Le Moine’ or ‘La Cantique du Trappiste’ (14 March). In April, he can be seen at the Cercle des Amateurs (‘Il est dans les étoiles’) and in June singing the William Tell with the ill-fated young tenor Delahaye (‘voix vibrante, accentuée et qui paraît bon musicien’). When he sang at G A Osborne’s concert, the critic used him as a whipping boy, for singing, too often, de Glimes’s composition, but should have been pleased after César Franck’s soirée, when the young man gave Delsarte’s ‘Les Stances à l’éternité’. ‘Les stances à l'Eternité, de Delsarte, morceau bien choisi pour la circonstance, furent admirablement bien chantées par Tagliafico, qui nous rappela la belle voix d'Alizard’. And already the gossip music press had him ‘on dit, engagé à l’Opéra’.

 

Tagliafico’s popularity spread quickly. In the new season he was seen widely in concert (Gazette musicale, the pianist Schad, Alard’s, Alexandre Batta’s, Hippolyte Armand’s, Conservatoire concerts, his own concert with the violinist Cellier) singing the popular chansons of the time and baritone arias, before, at the end of the season heading for the provinces: Cambrai (M Tagliafico, jeune chanteur d'un talent distingué, qui a dit avec verve et entraînement, et dans un style excellent, l'air d'OEdipe, et un air de la Sonnambula’), Clermont Ferrand, Brussels, Le Mans, Laval …

 

1843 saw him taking place as one of the most fashionable young singers in Paris. (‘Géraldy, Ponchard, Roger et Alexis Dupont tiennent toujours le premier rang parmi les chanteurs de concert; Tagliafico, Boulanger, Albertini, Mecatti, viennent après eux’). In the early months of the year I see him singing alongside Geraldy, Ponchard, Mme Sabatier, Iweins d’Hennin, Lia Duport, Ronconi and Dolores Nau, but also, in March, at the soirée of a Mme Lemoine alongside a young lady, ‘Mlle Cotti’, with whom he sang duets. ‘Une jeune cantatrice qui a une très jolie voix et que l'on applaudira souvent dans les salons’.

 

‘Mlle Cotti’ stays in this story till its end, for she became Madame Tagliafico. Legally, for some reason, not until 1855, but she was referred to as such well before. In fact, she had already been thus surnamed in 1844 when the gossip press announced Tagliafico’s ‘marriage’ to an heiress named Lacoste. ‘Mlle Cotti’ was, according to her marriage registration, Aimée Isabelle Cottiau, daughter of one Joseph Cottiau and his wife Marie-Antoinette Corpe. The only reference I can find to her background is in a ‘satirical’ magazine which is, I fear, the equivalent of modern days’ phony posts on facebook. And which also rubbishes Tagliafico. So I shall ignore it.

 

At the height of the season, in April, ‘la basse cantante de tous les concerts’ was singing sometimes twice daily. On April 2nd he appeared at Jacques Offenbach’s concert where he and the tenor Roger introduced a new bouffe scena ‘Le moine bourru’ composed by the concert-giver to a text by Edmond Plouvier. It was a great success, and can be considered Offenbach’s first venture into the bouffe genre. Less success greeted an excerpt from Castil-Blaize’s Pigeon volé.

On 7 April, ‘le baryton en vogue’ gave his own concert, with Mme Rossi-Caccia, Roger, Offenbach and Mlle Cotti, the next day his Oedipe à Colonne aria at Herman’s concert, then, in a first venture into a theatre, at the Opéra-Comique at Madame Rossi-Caccia’s Benefit. He sang ‘Vi ravviso’ and the William Tell duet with Roger and, the press commented, seemed surprised to be singing in a large auditorium.

 

Alongside the arias, the new songs kept coming out: Vogel’s ‘Satan’, Morel’s ‘Le Chrétien mourant’, Joseph Vimeux’s ‘Fleur de l’âme’ and ‘Le Cavalier Hadjoute’… before he left for the provinces with the tenor Révial … Angers, Tours, Nantes, Lille …

 

Towards the end of the year, he and Aimée were engaged for Elwart’s Concerts Vivienne, where they had a particular success (Leprévost’s Les Croises au St-Sepulcre). ‘His voice has developed into a double aspect of bouffe and sentimentale in an amazing way’. The concerts proliferated into the new year, but this time the gossips had their news right: the ‘roi des Concerts Vivienne’ was engaged for the Italian opera.

 

Tagliafico made his debut on 1 October 1844, in Linda di Chamonix, in the role of Marquis de Boisfleury in which Agostino Rovere had ‘saved the show’ in its Vienna premiere. It was a bass-baritone buffo part, and not one which appealed to many of his admirers. ‘A serious concert singer playing the farcical character of the Marquis’ Boisfleury...’ ‘Tagliafico a chanté mollement et s'est égaré plusieurs fois au milieu de fioritures maladroites et d'intonations douteuses. Nous l'attendons à son début dans un autre rôle’. ‘débutant Tagliafico dans un rôle bouffe qu demande une grande vivacité de débit et d’action; soyez certain qu’il eût choisi toute autre pièce s’il en avait eu la licence. Tagliafico a chanté très convenablement sa partie; on ne doit pas le juger encore comme acteur’. ‘His voice agreeable in a salon or a concert room is not sufficiently powerful in a theatre to admit of his attempting leading characters with success but as a second singer he is a useful acquisition’.

He appeared as Gubetta in La Rinnegata (Lucrezia Borgia) and the Commendatore inDon Giovanni, and scored a decided success playing Rodolfo to the La Sonnambula of Persiani and the Elvino of Mario. ‘Questo giovino artista … possiede una magnifica voce di basso ha fatto dei grandi progressi’.

 

In June, he and Aimée played an Italian Opera season at Brussels and Antwerp (Belcore, Ashton, Rodolfo &c), and in October returned for a new season. There were a few grumbles that he wasn’t Lablache, wasn’t Ronconi, but young Tagliafico was engaged as second bass, not first and the theatre had Morelli, Dérivis et al on their books. And it was second parts that he was allotted in I Puritani (Walton), Il Proscritto (Ernani), Oroe in Semiramide and as Basilio in Il Barbiere di Siviglia. His Basilio was a genuine hit, and he was cheered (‘s’en est acquitté à merveille’) alongside the stars of the evening. 

He had his chance to be not-Lablache when the bass fell ill during the run of Scaramuccia, and Tagliafico was switched from his little part to take over, he played more Sonnambula with Persiani, Oroveso in Norma with Grisi, and was Rolando to her Gemma di Vergy, Tobianchi in Le Fidanzata Corsa, and then got his best chance to date when he succeeded Dérivis in the role of Zaccaria in Nabucco. His performance was hailed as ‘un pas important dans sa carrière d’artiste’, he was preferred to his senior, and praised for singing it in the original key. ‘Tagliafico ha ottenuto un grande e legittimo successo nella parte di Zaccaria’. But there was more to come. He gave his Belcore alongside Persiani and Gardoni, and it was cheered as  ‘his best character yet’. He sang BidetheBent in Lucia di Lammermoor (‘Tagliafico n'a qu'un seul air, et il l'a chanté de maniére de mériter les suffrages de tous les connaisseurs éclairés’), switched to Masetto in Don Giovanni, played Count Robinson in Il Matrimonio segreto and a thankless role in I due Foscari, and the operatic press nodded ‘Il nostro secondo basso Tagliafico, divenuto primo nel Matrimonio e nel Nabucodonosor, ha secondato benissimo il suo capo Lablache’.

 

In April 1847, Tagliafico played his first season in London, at the Royal Italian Opera, Covent Garden. To start with, he faced, all over again, the same situation: he wasn’t Lablache. He wasn’t Ronconi or Tamburini. When he gave his Oroe he was dubbed ‘a sorry substitute for Lablache’, but when he deputised for Ronconi as Riccardo in I Puritani he was judged a ‘grande successo’ ‘sempre applaudito in unione a suoi tre celebri compagni la Grisi, Salvi, e Tamburini’. He appeared as Masetto, Gubetta and Rochefort in Anna Bolena, and visited the provinces in a concert party with Alboni and Corbari. Liverpool voted ‘a young and apparently not a very powerful man but he possesses a fine full voice of the quality of a true bass and is an accomplished and pleasing singer’. Manchester called him a baritone.

 

Back in Paris, he took up his old roles, and when La Cenerentola was produced he found himself cast alongside both Lablache (Don Magnifico) and Ronconi (Dandini) in the role of Alidor. The role was enlivened by an extra number: ‘Tagliafico (Alidor) a été mieux inspiré en choisissant un air de Pellegrini qu'il rend d'ailleurs avec un remarquable talent et qui lui a valu une double salve de bravos’. Nabucco was repeated, too, with Tagliafico billed alongside Ronconi and Mme Castellan.

As always, he played a parallel series of concerts and had notable success with Vimeux’s ‘Le Montagnard’ and, especially, Arnaud’s ‘Le Royal Tambour’.

 

The Covent Garden season of 1848 saw him, again, as Masetto and later the Commendatore, as Oroveso, Oroe, Basilio, Gubetta, plus a Bard in La Donna del lago, Fabrizio in La gazza ladra, Nevers in Les Hugenots and Gessler in William Tell but, when the company, headed by Grisi and Mario, headed for Dublin he found himself as first bass, with a basket of roles including the title-role in Don Pasquale. It was a position he would soon be used to. From England, he headed to St Petersburg, engaged as first bass for the fashionable winter season. 

 

Over the following seasons, the Covent Garden and St Petersburg/Moscow seasons would be regular engagements. In London, he was still not a star, and was not paid like one, but when he appeared as Bartolo to Ronconi’s Figaro and Tamburini’s Almaviva the press expressed themselves in a less aggressive manner than they had a couple of years: ‘[he] did all a singer could be expected to do after Lablache’, as Oroe he ‘surpassed himself … this excellent basso is an invaluable acquisition; he is so generally available’, as San Bris in Les Huguenots ‘though lacking the experience of Tamburini he has passion a good method, a fresh voice and is never oblivious  of the action of the scene’ and now, in Linda di Chamonix ‘exceedingly amusing’. He  played Il Matrimonio segreto again, the Commendatore, Oberthal in Le Prophète and when the Rossini Stabat Mater was given, and Tamburini gave the ‘Pro peccatis’, Tagliafico sang the bass concerted solos. The Italian artists performed at the Liverpool Festival , and Mario, Grisi and Alboni played La Sonnambula, La fille du régiment, Don Pasquale, Lucia di Lammermoor and Cenerentola at Manchester, Dublin and Birmingham. Tagliafico played the bass roles and culled ‘we have rarely seen a more talented Dandini’.

 

Aimée had been there, all along, singing with her husband in concert (‘Madame Tagliafico, who is a most charming and interesting person, sang in the most attractive manner a pretty trifle by Clapisson, ‘ Le secret, le moulin.’), but the time was coming when she, too, would be included in the casts, as an ever-useful comprimaria. I see her listed, in the 1850-1 cast for Alina regina di Goloconda in Russia.

 

1851 saw Tagliafico appearing as Pizzaro to the Rocco of Formes in Fidelio, Baldassare in La Favorita, ll Priore in Roberto il diavolo,  and Elmiro in Otello, in 1852 Ruggeiro in La Juive and Pietro in Jullien’s disastrous Pietro il grande, and 1853 Fieramosca in the one performance of Benvenuto Cellini and Sparafucile in Rigoletto. He also sang in the Bradford, Birmingham, and Three Choirs Festivals, but only in the concerts, leaving Elijah to Formes and Weiss.

 

In 1854, Lablache played at Covent Garden, but Tagliafico was well on display as Belcore (‘now the best representative of Belcore extant’), as Basilio to Lablache’s Bartolo (‘by many degrees the best we have ever seen’ ‘most masterly in expression … original humour’), Sparafucile, Pizzaro, Elmiro, Aliprando in Matilda di Shabran, the Commendatore, Oberthal, Gubetta, Raimbaldo in Le Comte Ory and Pietro in Masanielloduetting the hit of the night with Tamberlik. ‘It is not so very long since this gentleman had much need of his good voice to excuse an awkward presence on the stage. He is now necessary to the filling of a secondary part in almost every opera and acts and sings so well as to materially strengthen any cast in which he is included.’

When the company went to the provinces with Sofie Cruvelli, he got promoted to primo, and played Iago, Don Silva (Ernani) and Figaro, before the couple departed for Russia.

 

1855 saw L’Etoile du nord (Yermoloff) and the first British production of Il Trovatore, in which Tagliafico was Ferrando (‘parfaitement chanté et joué,’), while the tour had him as Leporello and Giorgio Walton and the tail end of the year a visit to Salzburg and Russia (Macbeth &c).

 

The destruction by fire of Covent Garden Theatre, saw the 1856 London season played at the Lyceum. If the loss of the theatre’s library and wardrobe limited the repertoire given, the press were now thoroughly on his side: ‘[He] shows every year more clearly that he has in him the true spirit of an artist’. And Aimée was now well installed as Gianetta in L’Elisir d’amore, Inez in Trovatore, Inez in  La Favorita and other such roles. 1856 was, too, the year of the coronation of the Czar, and the Tagliafici made the journey for the occasion and for the season.

 

In the 1857 Lyceum season, the pair played Duphol and Flora in La Traviata, Aimée was Lisa to Victoire Balfe’s Sonnambula, and Dieudonné got to show his comic side in Fra Diavolo: ‘Signor Tagliafico’s creation for himself of the part of a supple, graceless scamp, out of the ragged bandit Beppo was noticeable as an achievement worthy of the rank he has of late years been winning as an artist’, ‘an artist of great versatility and merit’. But this year they did not return to Russia. They went the other way, and headed for America.

 

They played a three-months season in Havana, with Frezzolini as star, and some dates in America, but Tagliafico didn’t win many Havanese hearts in retrospect when he wrote back to Europe about the local opera scene: ‘everyone smoking, hopeless orchestra and chorus, end of career artists… only Bosio is any good and the press don’t care for her and say she’s cold’. Our bass-baritone was accustomed to Covent Garden, the Italiens and the rich royal theatres of Russia. 

They were soon on their way home, ready for the 1858 season at the rebuilt Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. On opening night, Les Huguenots was given, with Tagliafico as Nevers and Madame as the Dama d’onore. The only new roles the season brought was that of Daniele to the Zampa of best-friend Tamberlik, and the foolish Sir Tristan in Martha. 1859 was another year of little novelty, although the spouses got to play stage spouses as Fabrizio and Lucia in La Gazza ladra and he appeared as the Hunter in  Dinorah. Winter, he took part in a concert party tour for Beale. 

 

By now, the Taglificii were firmly ‘of Covent Garden’, and surely enough soon they were re-engaged for three years. Little changed: in 1860 they were seen as Bertha and Basilio, Beppo, Pizzaro, the Commendatore, Fabrizio and Lucia, Ferrando, Nevers, Oroveso, Oberthal, Sparafucile, Gubetta (‘faultless’, 'Tagliafico has long been one of out favourites. He is a genuine artist full of humour, sings in a thoroughly manly style and conscientiously studies his composer'), but Madame T began to be seen a little more often, and in 1861 she took up the role of Edwige in William Tell, to go with the Sonnambula Lisa and her Barbiere Berta, in the following seasons she would add Thisbe in Cenerentola and, above all, the Marchioness in La Fille du régiement to her roles. The French press gasped: ‘The excellent little marchioness! dit le Times, la petite marquise par excellence, la nouvelle et non dernière étoile de la saison a fait preuve d'un talent peu commun de comédienne et de chanteuse’. Tagliafico teamed with Zelger as the conspirators in Un Ballo in maschera.

 

1861 also saw the couple return to the Paris Italiens for the season. He made his rentrée in La Sonnambula with Belart and Marie Battu. Some welcomed him back: ‘Tagliafico n'est pas pour nous une nouvelle connaissance. Il a dit avec goût et sûreté son air d'entrée, et il a joué avec une aisance qui n'est pas commune aux Italiens
…’. Others were less willing: ‘une ancienne basse qui a eu un certain succès à Londres, et qui vient à Paris pour remplacer Graziani. Tagliafico a du talent, mais il est loin de valoir Graziani et même Badiali qui chantait Sonnambula l'année dernière’. But the Parisian press were unanimous in welcoming his Don Basilio (‘a real Basilio’), Sparafucile and Samuele, while Aimée took the part of Marcella in Donizetti’s Il Furioso all’isola San-Domingo. 

 Tagliafico’s career, well-established, continued for another 14 years on the same lines. A commentator in 1863 wrote ‘Signor Tagliafico has been, as ever, invaluable in the varied repertory of quasi-subordinate parts that fall within his sphere—such, for example, as Rodolfo (La Sonnambula), Basilio (ll Barbiere), Gcssler (Guillaume Tell) Sparafucile (Riqoletto), Lord Tristan (Marta), Count Oberthal (the Prophète), Belcore (L’Elisir) not to mention his unequalled Commendatore … ' A decade later, another referred to him as ‘Tagliafico, the baritone, of Protean cleverness in all sorts of characters … Sig Tagliafico, who seems to be clever in all sorts of parts suited to a baritone, or even ponderous basso’.

He added a few more roles to his mostly short-time schedule: Horatio in Hamlet, Babekan in Oberon, Wagner in Faust and, when a temporary star came along, he dropped back from years of playing Pizzaro to appearing as Il Ministro in Fidelio. But when Graziani fell ill, he went on to play Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro in his place. In Paris, he played Laertes to the Mignon of Christine Nilsson. 

Tagliafico recommends a throat sweet to Ciampi!

 In 1873, he was appointed régisseur at the Paris Italiens and, in his thirtieth year at Covent Garden, he succeeded to the post of stage director. His productions (Le Roi de Lahore) were exceedingly well noticed. He also directed the productions at the Opéra at Monte-Carlo. However, in 1881 he was affected with a heart complaint, which put an end to his active career.

 

He spent the last years of his life in Nice, teaching music. I spot Madame Tagliafico there too, at a society do in 1899, and when Dieudonné died it was said that he had done so ‘surrounded by his family’. The only family I am aware of is a daughter, Julie [Giulia] Marie, Madame Jean-François Oller, until her divorce in 1878. She seems to have remarried in 1900. The letters of Taine refer explicitly to ‘Tagliafico, his wife and his daughter’ in London during the war.

 

Dieudonné Tagliafico had a splendid career as a vocalist and a man of the theatre. But, alongside it he ran a second career, as a writer and composer. From his earliest days, he penned lyrics and translations of lyrics to songs and scenas of the type that he delivered in the Parisian concert. Later in life he turned out words and music for a large number of highly popular songs of which the ‘pensée du paysan’ ‘Pauvres fous’, ‘La chanson de Marinette’ and ‘Je n’ose’ were the most enduring. Others included ‘Quand l’oiseau chante’, ‘La Saint-Janvier’, ‘Bonnes Gens’, ‘Par-ci, par-là’, ‘Les deux roses’, ‘Vous aimerez’, ‘La Chanson des mariniers’,‘Le secret Colombine’, ‘L’angelus de la mer’, ‘La fin du monde’, ‘Rien à vous dire’, ‘Cherchez’,  ‘Dites-moi vos chagrins’, J'aime à rêver’, ‘Toute chose a du bon’, ‘Et pourquoi pas’, ‘Si vous saviez’, ‘Gazouillis d'Oiseaux’, ‘C’est le Printemps’, ‘Voulez-vous [bien] ne plus dormir’, ‘Vous êtes si Jolie’  and ‘Sur l’eau’.

‘Pauvre fous’ was recorded by Delmas and Fred Gouin on Pathé, and it remained in the baritone repertoire, professional and amateur, for more than half a century. Tagliafico apparently asked that it be sung at his funeral. Maybe it was. ‘La Chanson de Marinette’ was also recorded by Fred Gouin and by tenor Aimé Doniat and has reached the heights of youtube where one can also find his ‘Quand l’oiseau chante’.

 

He was a prolific writer as well, and if I have quoted few reviews re the Tagliaficii written by the London correspondent of Le Menestral, that is because that correspondent was he. I also see a report of Patti’s wedding where ‘la ravissante Giulia Tagliafico’ was present ‘avec son père’. Father is described as a writer for the Times. So maybe he was that too.