It's kind of bizarre that nobody seems to know anything about Aristide Rota. Not even Roberto Marcocci found his name anywhere in his enormous collection of newspaper reviews, ads and
playbills, and so it seems that he didn't sing on stage, at least not as a soloist.
But he is well-recorded on Odeon, G&T, Pathé and Lyrophon between 1904 and 1911 (mostly Neapolitan songs and operetta, very few
operatic recordings that betray thorough musical and vocal training, though). And he was, notably, the first singer ever to
record Torna a Surriento, before the song was even published in print. His Neapolitan dialect is so impeccable that I bet he
came from the region of Campania.
One of the problems in researching him is that Rota is anything but a rare name; there were several opera singers called Rota at
"our" Rota's times, one of them (Umberto Rota) even a lead tenor.
Reference 1: Gesellschaft für historische Tonträger, Wien; reference 2