Bruno Prevedi

21 December 1928 Revere – 12 January 1988 Milano

Picture of Bruno Prevedi as Johnson
Don Carlo with Ettore Bastianini

Picture of Bruno Prevedi as Johnson
Dick Johnson

Bruno Prevedi singsIl trovatore: Di quella pira

Bruno Prevedi singsIl trovatore: Parlar non vuoi, with Gwyneth Jones, Giulietta Simionato and Peter Glossop
In RA format

Bruno Prevedi singsDon Carlo: Io l'ho perduta
In RA format

Bruno Prevedi singsI due Foscari: Non maledirmi, o prode
In RA format

Bruno Prevedi singsSimon Boccanegra: Sento avvampar nell'anima
In RA format

Bruno Prevedi singsMedea: O grido di dolor, with Leonie Rysanek
In RA format

Bruno Prevedi singsLa fanciulla del West: Ch'ella mi creda
In RA format
I would like to thank Thomas Silverbörg for the recordings (Fanciulla, Medea, Parlar non vuoi, I due Foscari, Don Carlo) and picture (Don Carlo).
I wish to thank Daniele Godor for the picture (Fanciulla).
I would like to thank Paolo Cavassini for the recording (Boccanegra).

His parents were poor peasants, who moved to Milano where Bruno Prevedi grew up. He worked in the automobile industry, and got a late start as a singer, making his debut in 1958, at age 30, as a baritone (Tonio at the Teatro Nuovo in Milano). One year later, he made a second debut at the same theater, now as a tenor (Turiddu). So far, he was still a spare time singer, and worked full hours for Fiat Automobiles. Only in 1960, he dared to feed his family on operatic singing.

He appeared in Liège, Bologna, Modena, Naples (San Carlo), Barcelona (Liceu) or at the Arena di Verona. His breakthrough came in 1963, with debuts at La Scala, the Vienna Staatsoper and Covent Garden. Before long, he sang on literally every important Italian stage (particularly a whole lot at La Scala), at the Paris Opéra and the Colón in Buenos Aires. From 1965, he was a member of the Metropolitan Opera, where he sang 65 performances, all until 1968. The next year, 1969, he was already at La Scala for the last time; his career went on a quick decline now. In the 1970s, he still got a lot of engagements in the German-speaking countries (Deutsche Oper Berlin, Vienna Staatsoper, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Zürich) and sang in Belgrade, Budapest or Miami, but his performances grew rarer and rarer, and by the second half of the decade, he appeared in Venezuela or in South Africa, where he also sang his very last performance in 1982 (Pollione in Johannesburg).

He had always lived on the beauty of his voice, and had never got proper schooling; he also never had a high C (his ultimate note was B flat). Recurring vocal problems made him wary of his own voice, which he often husbanded in sorrow of not getting through the end of the opera. In top of all this, he was obviously too nice, too modest and too polite to stand his ground in the operatic business.

Reference 1; reference 2: Kutsch & Riemens, reference 3

Repertory

Pagliacci (Tonio) – Milano, August 1958
Cavalleria rusticana – Milano, September 1959
Madama Butterfly – Roma, June 1960
Fedora – Milano, September 1960
La traviata – Montichiari, 17 December 1960
Turandot – Reggio Emilia, 26 January 1961
La forza del destino – Mirandola, 29 April 1961
Attila – Lugano, 8 June 1961
Macbeth – Losanna, October 1961
Tosca – Liège, 9 November 1961
Norma – Bologna, December 1961
Nabucco – Budapest, June 1962
Don Carlos – Augsburg, August 1962
Debora e Jaele – Milano, January 1963
Simon Boccanegra – Strasburgo, April 1963
Il trovatore – Szeged, August 1963
Andrea Chénier – Barcellona, November 1963
La fanciulla del West – Barcellona, November 1963
Un ballo in maschera – New York, April 1967
Medea – Dallas, 10 November 1967
Boris Godunov (Grigorij) – Milano, December 1967
Alceste – Palermo, March 1968
Aida – Santiago, September 1968
Ernani – Milano, November 1968
Francesca da Rimini – Roma, 11 September 1969
Agnese di Hohenstaufen – Roma, 3 Aprile 1970
I due Foscari – Torino, 27 August 1971
Fernando Cortez – Torino, 11 January 1973
Adriana Lecouvreur – Bari, February 1975
Nerone – Torino, 23 August 1975
Pagliacci – Hamburg 1975
Otello – Zürich, September 1977
Reference: Iride Brasca & Daniele Rubboli Bruno Prevedi, una storia d'amore e di musica, Azzali, 1996

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