Del Monaco Mario, *27 July 1915 Florence, †October 1982 Mestre near Venice, Italian singer (tenor). He spent his youth in Pesaro, where he trained at the conservatoire under A. Melocchi, whilst also studying painting and sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts. At the age of 20, he won first prize in Rome at a competition organised by the conductor T. Serafin. In 1941, he made his debut at the Teatro Puccini in Milan in Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. In 1942, he took part in the world premiere of N. Rota’s Ariodante. In 1948, he toured with the company of Naples’ Teatro San Carlo, which brought him international fame. He sang at the Rome Opera, La Scala in Milan, Covent Garden Theatre in London, in Stockholm, Paris and Vienna; in 1950 he performed in Buenos Aires, in 1952 in San Francisco, and from 1951 to 1959 he was a member of the Metropolitan Opera House company in New York. In 1959, he also visited the Soviet Union. He was regarded as one of the finest heldentenors of the modern era, with his performances in Verdi’s Aida, Il Trovatore and Otello, Puccini’s Tosca, Manon Lescaut and La Fanciulla del West, Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, and U. Giordano’s Andrea Chénier being particularly admired. He recorded many roles from his repertoire. In 1961, he returned to the Covent Garden Theatre in his signature role of Otello in Verdi’s opera, a part he had performed over 400 times on numerous opera stages. However, by the late 1960s, his magnificent voice, lacking the support of regular training, had lost some of its exceptional qualities; signs of an incurable illness also began to appear. Del Monaco switched partly to baritone roles; in May 1975, he made his final stage appearance at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo.
