Agostino Lazzari

I wish to thank Albert Scerri for the recordings.

I would like to thank Thomas Silverbörg for the recording.

World War II delayed Lazzari's debut, which took eventually place in 1946 as Almaviva at the Teatro Regio in Parma. After a few years in the Italian provinces, he won the first AS.LI.CO contest in 1950; that was his breakthrough.

The centers of his career were the Rome opera theater (1951–73), the San Carlo in Naples (1949–71) and the Comunale in Bologna (1949–65). Other than that, he sang in Florence (both at the Teatro Comunale and the Teatro della Pergola), Bergamo, Catania, at the Monnaie, Liceu, Covent Garden, in Düsseldorf, Köln, Hamburg, München, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Zürich, Geneva, Bordeaux, Marseille. He also sang a considerable number of complete opera productions for the Italian radio RAI. An interesting case is La Scala: Kutsch and Riemens say he made his debut there in 1947 as Don Ramiro, Wikipedia says it was in 1951 as Ernesto – but the Scala archives know of neither of those performances and have him exclusively as Merkur in Die Liebe der Danae in December 1952.

His repertory was very interesting and included, other than the habitual Alfredo, Rodolfo, Nemorino, Edgardo, Elvino, des Grieux (Manon), Werther and so on, a few roles rarely sung by Italians (Hoffmann, Fra Diavolo, Don Ottavio, Belmonte, Eisenstein), and lots of rarities: Don Collandro (La molinara by Paisiello), Carlo (Lo frate 'nnamorato by Pergolesi), Filandro (Le astuzie femminili by Cimarosa), Claudio (Elisa e Claudio by Mercadante), Elisero (Mosè in Egitto), Rossini's Otello, Alberto (La gazetta), Amico Fritz, Flammen (Lodoletta), Giovanni (Maristella by Pietri), Lionetto (Gloria by Cilea), Federico (L'arlesiana), Filipeto (I quattro rusteghi), Armand (Boulevard Solitude by Henze), King Kaspar (Amahl and the night visitors), Teacher (Veselohra na mostě/Comedy on the bridge by Martinů), and even Sinodal! He sang into the second half of the 1970s.

Reference 1: Archivio storico del Teatro dell'Opera di Roma; reference 2: Kutsch & Riemens; reference 3