Adolphe Mariotti
Information on Mariotti is definitely scarce, and he used to puzzle me considerably. In February 1879, an obviously young Monsieur Mariotti ("a tenor with a bright future") participated in a concert at the salon of a Rouen businessman. In March 1886, at the Salle Érard in Paris, Monsieur Mariotti sang in a concert organized and headed by baritone Numa Auguez (later the husband of Berthe de Montalant, hence Auguez-de Montalant). It seems probable that the 1879 and the 1886 Mariotti were the same person. At that point, Adolfo Mariotti (other newspaper reviews quote his first name) and his wife had toured the US for half a year already; the article quoted above leaves no doubt as to the level of quality on which they exercised their profession. As for Mrs. Mariotti, the soprano Adelina Dossena, she used to be advertised as having sung at La Scala in Milano (a bold lie, needless to say), and as being Italian, although she regularly (yes indeed, regularly, since she was much more prominent than her husband, and featured in a lot of US newspapers) shows up as "Madame Adeline Dossena", too, which seems (with Adeline and not Adelina) about as Italian as the duettists Ilda and Granval. The earliest concert that I was able to trace by Dossena and Mariotti was on 31 October 1909 at the Washington Theater in San Francisco. Los Angeles, August 1912, a new type of Dossena-Mariotti appearances: "In the cabaret show, which opened at Brink's cafe last night to continue throughout the week, the whole gamut of the musical scale is run, from stately and dignified grand opera, featured in duets and solos by Signor Mariotti, Italian tenor, and Madame Adelina Dossena, coloratura soprano, to reckless and riotous ragtime, sung and acted by 'Happyana' Robinson and Lorlne Ramona, formerly with the Louisiana Lou company. Mariotti's most effective number is his solo from 'Martha', while perhaps the most applause is accorded his duet from 'Lucia', sung with Madame Dossena. 'Rlgoletto* was also well rendered in a tenor solo. Madame Dossena's best number is from the 'Merry Widow.'" This kind of mixed programs between circus and opera was Dossena's and Mariotti's regular fare for the next years, particularly also when they joined the De Pace Opera Company in 1914. The Italian brothers Bernardo and Nicola De Pace were internationally acclaimed mandolin virtuosi (Bernardo later became a fixture at the Met, playing the mandolin to Ezio Pinza's singing of Don Giovanni's serenade), but from 1914 to 1919, they ran the utterly strange De Pace Opera Company (later re-labeled De Pace Sextett) – yet another circus-and-opera crossover business, where the mandolinists also sang operatic arias, and the opera singers also played the mandolin (hold on for a proof). It has been firmly established that Dossena was part of the troupe for almost its entire period of activity. But what about Mariotti? The next proven and tested fact from our tenor's biography is that he owned a (pompously named) "Dante Alighieri vocal studio" in New York, and published a booklet "Natura ed arte" in 1918: a bilingual English-Italian homage to Enrico Caruso. Whether or not Caruso ever had heard of the admirer that obviously hoped to get a – however small – share of his fame cannot be decided, but the booklet provides us with a photo of its author, Adolfo Mariotti:  And in comparison with that photo, it's now obvious that also Mariotti was part of the De Pace Opera Company and later the De Pace Sextett, although newspapers and publicity never mentioned his name (he was hence considered one of the unknown De Pace members, so far): 
 In the back row of the first picture, from left to right, Adelina Dossena, Nicola De Pace and Bernardo De Pace; and the guy front row left is Mariotti – with a mandolin!! Second picture, from left, Bernardo De Pace, Adelina Dossena, unknown, Mariotti, unknown, Nicola De Pace. At some point of their careers, before or after their De Pace tenure, Mariotti and Dossena even produced postcards with their likenesses:  Now how do we make ends meet? The Mariotti of 1879 and 1886 can never have been De Pace's and Dossena's Mariotti, who is way too young on the photos from the 1910s. Who sang that Paris concert in January 1897 has to remain undecided, it may have been the younger or the older Mariotti, I don't know. In any case, Dossena's certainly is the Mariotti that was called Adolphe in Monte Carlo and Adolfo in Viadana, both in 1897. There's also little doubt that he was really Adolphe: both his sung and his spoken French (he announces himself on the Phono recordings) are perfectly idiomatic, and his singing, for all its shortcomings, betrays a French and not an Italian school. Of course, Mariotti is an Italian surname, and he published his Caruso booklet in Italian; so my best guess is that he was from south-east France (the early appearances in Monte Carlo are another hint to it), and probably from a bilingual French-Italian family. (Those bilingual people are numerous on the French and scarce on the Italian side of the border.) Final notice from our tenor's biography: In 1932, he still owned a voice studio, but now in Mount Vernon (NY); in newspaper ads, he proudly stated: "Beniamino Gigli, the great Metropolitan Opera singer, says: 'Maestro Adolfo Mariotti knows and understands all the secrets of Bel Canto.'" A safe assertion, in November 1932 – Gigli had returned to Italy seven months earlier, where he certainly didn't read the "Bronxville Press"!
References:
Picture source (top), Picture source (center two), Picture source (bottom) |