Clemente Guearti

What Yaeche wrote was basically this: Clemente Guearti, born 12 November 1892 in Bahía Blanca (Argentina), grew up in Madrid, where his parents owned a cutlery factory. He studied voice in Milano with Giovanni Castellano and made his debut at the Teatro Real in Madrid as Jean in Le prophète. He went on to sing at the Liceu in Barcelona, the Colón in Buenos Aires, and La Scala in Milano. His roles included Manrico, Radames, Canio and so on. After a stage accident, he had to retire as a singer and became a voice teacher first at the conservatory in Milano, then in Bordeaux. Among his students were Luis Mariano, Robert Vidal and Roland Cougé. Guearti died in Bordeaux on 20 December 1959.

Now this was for the most part wrong... Guearti had never sung at any of the quoted theaters. He was not the teacher of Luis Mariano. No voice teacher called Giovanni Castellano could be traced. The date and place of death are correct, and it's also proven and tested that Guearti was a voice teacher (he even wrote a book on the subject in 1955), and that Cougé was his student. But he never worked at any conservatory in Milano. The part on Bahía Blanca and the cutlery factory may be true or invented, we don't know. The part on the stage accident is highly improbable because there is no evidence that any Clemente Guearti (or Artigue, his supposed real name as per a later information by Yaeche) has ever graced any operatic stage on this planet.

When Nouvion found out, he didn't simply take the Guearti page from the site, but started a crusade against Yaeche and his accounts on Guearti. (Not re-posted, like all similar crusades that were once upon a time on this site.) Now Yaeche certainly had a penchant for making up stories, but most of Guearti's fake biography was evidently faked by himself (and only handed down by his faithful admirer Yaeche). Guearti's inventions even made it into the local press when he died:

Yaeche made a fool of himself when coming up with a recording that Guearti would have made for Caruso on a day when the more famous colleague was indisposed. Obviously again a forgery by Guearti himself: an ordinary copy of Caruso's "O paradiso", with Guearti's name glued over Caruso's on the label. But Yaeche, the vocal pedagogue, was unable to recognize Caruso's voice (unlike most everybody else), and raved about how Guearti's voice was even superior to Caruso's. Later on, he claimed that Guearti also recorded as a substitute for Beniamino Gigli (however without presenting a respective record).