Bonci was born and died near Rimini. After study with Pedrotti and Felice Coen in Pesaro, and with Delle Sedie in Paris, he made his debut in Parma in 1896. In the early years of the twentieth century he was regarded as Caruso’s only serious rival, excelling in roles demanding lightness, agility and elegance rather than the heavier and more dramatic parts. After some appearances at Covent Garden, he scored a great success in New York in 1906, singing in I Puritani at the opening of Hammerstein’s Manhattan Opera House. For the next three seasons he transferred his activities to the Metropolitan, where he sang 65 performances of 14 roles.He served in the Italian Air Force in the Great War. Thereafter, he performed only occasionally, devoting most of his time to teaching in Milan. “In the older repertory, he excelled by virtue of the sweetness of his tone and the finish of his phrasing.” (Desmond Shawe-Taylor)
This is an Edison Amberola recording from 1913. The Edison vertical cut cylinder recording method was far superior to the lateral cut disk recordings. The lateral cut method could not adequately handle variations in volume, so the singer had to step into the recording horn for soft passages and back away for forte singing. In addition, the nature of the spinning disk, including centrifugal force and variation in speed as the needle tracked closer to the center of the disk, lead to inner-groove distortion. The straight tracking, even speed, hill-and-dale needle movement of the Edison cylinder produced a much more natural sound and volume range, and resulted in generally superior reproduction. The cylinder could not compete commercially with the disk recording for several reasons. Among them: disks were easier to store than cylinders; and Eldridge Johnson and the folks at Victor, the leading disk recording company in the US, were very good at public relations. Victor signed most of the major artists to exclusive contracts (and G&T and other disk outfits in Europe did the same), while Edison twiddled around with mediocre popular performers. Edison had extremely poor taste, and ruled his company with an iron fist, not hiring recruitment agents or allowing his staff to sign high profile performers. Think of Victor as MicroSoft and Edison as Apple. The technically superior product is not necessarily the winner.