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very early  Columbia: FASCINATING recording of Taurino Parvis
"Singer-actor of remarkable quality, as well as a man of vast culture ... able to sing in six languages" [1], was also called "intellectual baritone"

w piano

Mattinata
Ruggiero Leoncavallo (composer) 

Taurino Parvis (vocalist : baritone vocal) 
Description: Baritone vocal solo, with piano

ca. Jan.-Aug. 1905 New York, New York  Columbia A530

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Taurino Parvis (Turin, September 15, 1879 - Barcelona, ??May 9, 1957) was an Italian baritone.


Biography
"Singer-actor of remarkable quality, as well as a man of vast culture ... able to sing in six languages" [1], was also called "intellectual baritone" [2]. He studied music (cello) and singing first in Turin with Maestro Wilkinson, then he perfected in Milan with Maestro Vanni, and at the same time continued his university studies in Law at the University of Turin, a degree he obtained in 1903. After obtaining a contracted with the singing company set up by the Neapolitan soprano Emma Carelli, it made its debut in 1900 in the first Brazilian performance of Pietro Mascagni's opera Iris, in the Kyoto part, at the Rio de Janeiro Opera House.

His debut in Italy took place in 1901 at the Teatro Comunale di Cesena in the part of Marcello in La bohème. At the beginning of his career he performed in the main provincial theaters, in Reggio Emilia, Piacenza, Modena, Sanremo, Terni and Conegliano. At the Donizetti Theater in Bergamo in May 1904 he is De Siriex in Fedora. In the seasons 1904-1905-1906 he participated in an American tour that saw him on the stages of the main theaters of the cities of North America: at the Metropolitan Theater in New York he made his debut in November as Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor with Marcella Sembrich, Enrico Caruso and Marcel Journet followed in the same year by a secondary part, that of Morales in Carmen with Journet, Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet (Gounod) with Journet, Alfio in Cavalleria rusticana, Schaunard in La bohème with Nellie Melba, Caruso, Antonio Scotti and Journet and Silvio in Pagliacci (opera) with Caruso and Scotti.

Later he sang in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Omaha, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Helsingør. At the Teatro alla Scala in Milan he made his debut in 1908 in the part of Gerard in Andrea Chénier. In the 1911 season he sang in the first performance for the Teatro Regio in Turin in the part of Sheriff Rance in La fanciulla del West. He had a vast repertoire represented by about seventy parts, which included works from the early Romanticism, from the Wagnerian repertoire, from the realist opera. Furthermore, thanks also to its particular vocal characteristics and its strong stage presence, also works of the early twentieth century by contemporary Italian composers such as Amilcare Zanella, Marco Falghieri, Primo Riccitelli, Vincenzo Michetti, Luigi Mancinelli should be remembered. He sang with the greatest singers of the time, such as tenors Enrico Caruso, Miguel Fleta, Francesco Merli, Aureliano Pertile, the sopranos Lucrezia Bori, Ester Mazzoleni, Bianca Scacciati. Between 1905 and 1907 he recorded numerous opera arias for the record companies Columbia, Zonaphone, Pathè Record, Edison Record, Società Fonografica Napoletana. He sang in several international theaters. "The parts that most distinguished his career were those of sheriff Jack Rance, Falstaff and Scarpia, where the baritone could show off without parsimony the strength of his voice and his remarkable skills as a great actor" [3]. Parvis's career lasted over thirty years: he retired from the stage in the early thirties, playing the part of Ping in Turandot for the last time. He resumed the legal activity and moved to Spain, where he became the local agent of all Italian film companies. "When he got sick he did not survive a difficult surgery" [4].