Titta Ruffo (1877-1953)

Nemico della patria
Andrea Chénier by Umberto Giordano

Titta Ruffo was part of the impressive batch of male Italian singers to invade the international opera scene in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. His Italian contemporaries were Enrico Caruso, Antonio Scotti, Riccardo Stracciari, Giuseppe de Luca, Pasquale Amato, Mario Ancona, Giovanni Zenatello, Mattia Battistini, Alessandro Bonci and Giovanni Martinelli. Ruffo stood out as the most powerful baritone voice of his time, well-suited to the demands of the “modern” opera, such as those written by Verdi, Puccini and Leoncavallo, which dispensed with florid vocal passages in favor of dramatic declamation.

Although his voice was rich and powerful, Ruffo was not considered the finest singer of the batch. That distinction would more likely fall to de Luca, who was still performing in his late sixties. Ruffo first appeared in the U.S. in Philadelphia and New York in 1912. He was a well-established international star by the time he appeared at the Met in 1921, but his voice, though retaining it’s glorious size, had begun to lose it’s resonance. He retired from the stage in 1929.

The recordings that probably best capture the glory of Ruffo’s baritone are “Nemico della patria” and the “Brindisi” from Hamlet. The recording I have decided to include here is “Nemico della patria”.