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Gracing concert stages from Rome to New York, leading tenor Giulio Gari
sang lyric and dramatic characters from Rossini to Wagner. With a
repertoire of over fifty five roles, his remarkable voice and dramatic
portrayals are remembered principally through his performances with the
New York City Opera and the Metropolitan Opera from 1945 to 1961.
His admiring colleagues had the pleasure of knowing a kind and generous
friend whose musicianship brought him to the premier opera companies
from a humble beginning in Romania.
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Giulio was born in 1909 in Medias, Romania, the youngest of ten
children. His talent was recognized when he sang as a child in
operetta throughout Romania and Hungary. After studying with the
celebrated Viennese soprano Lotte Gelinek, he was accepted into the
Verdi Conservatory in Milan.
Substituting for Tito Schipa as Almaviva in Rossini’s Barbiere di Siviglia in 1938,
he made his operatic debut at Rome’s Teatro Reale dell’Opera under the
baton of the legendary Tullio
Serafin. Soon after he secured a contract with the NBC Symphony
Orchestra. He also performed on the NBC radio show, Musical
Bits, with Phil Spitalny conducting.
The following year he sang in the American Premiere of Gian Carlo
Menotti’s Amelia Goes to the Ball.
This
performance with the St. Louis Opera was the beginning of his long
association with Maestro Laszlo Halasz, founder of the New York City
Opera.
In 1945 he made his debut with a leading American opera
company when he stepped on the stage of the New York City Opera as Erik
in Wagner’s Der Fliegende Hollander.
Composer
Virgil Thomson, critic of the New
York Herald Tribune,
wrote “the vocal treat of the evening was Giulio Gari, who sang with
beauty of voice, easy command of the heroic style and no hesitancy
about the high notes.” This superlative review was one of many
received throughout Gari’s career. Another was that of Noel
Strauss of the New York Times.
Regarding
Gari’s Rodolfo in La Boheme,
Strauss wrote that it provided “the most distinguished vocalism of the
evening, he showed sensitivity and marked refinement of style,
climactic and exciting.”
Gari toured Latin America and the Caribbean
garnering ecstatic reviews,
particularly in 1946 when he sang the challenging tenor lead in
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Havana Symphony Orchestra
under Leopold Stokowski. In Central America he performed with Gladys
Swarthout and in Guatemala
participated in the first opera season there in twenty years.
On January 6, 1953, Gari made his debut with the Metropolitan Opera
singing Pinkerton to the Butterfly of the renowned Licia
Albanese. New York Times critic
Howard
Taubman, after praising “his fine voice . . . fine style .
. . skill and polish” predicted a luminous future. Even with a
regular 32 week schedule, Giulio frequently substituted and always
delivered superb performances. Once during the
Metropolitan Opera’s annual seven week tour he was flown to Boston to
sing his first Don Carlo in a
performance hailed as “sterling.” He astounded everyone when he
made last minute appearances as the Duke in Rigoletto, Don Jose in Carmen, and Dimitry in Boris Godunov, on three successive nights.
Giulio’s versatility, preparedness and stamina were legendary. He
performed both Turiddu in Cavalleria
Rusticana
and Canio in Pagliacci, a
feat rarely attempted. The New
York Times
review lauded him for singing both parts “with their different
tessitura and their severe demands on an artist’s vocal and histrionic
endurance”, and for delivering each “with remarkable control of his
fine voice and unusual depth of human feeling.” That same evening
Gari went on to sing Don Jose in
Carmen.
As a guest artist, Gari sang in a film version of Verdi’s La Traviata and he performed in
Kodaly’s Psalmus Hungaricus at Carnegie
Hall. He was invited to sing in the American premiere of
Ildebrando Pizzettie’s L’Assassinio
nella Cattedrale at the Empire State Music Festival.
Giulio Gari retired from the Metropolitan in 1961. He became
director of the Voice Department of the Long Island Institute of Music
in 1964. He also taught voice at Lehigh University. In 1970
he joined the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia,
later teaching at Temple University. During this time, Gari
maintained his private voice studio in Manhattan and served as Cantor
at Temple Sinai in Forest Hills, New York.
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The Giulio Gari
Foundation • 175 West 72nd Street,
Suite 4F • New York, NY 10023
Tel.
212-874-3934 Fax
212-874-4676 • gloria@giuliogari.org
The
Giulio Gari Foundation
is a 501c3 organization
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