Mattia Battistini (27 February 1856 – 7 November 1928) was an Italian operatic baritone, referred to as the "King of Baritones" in multiple publications.
Early life
Battistini was born in Rome on February 27, 1856. He spent most of his childhood in the village of Collebaccaro di Contigliano, near Rieti, where his parents owned an estate.
His grandfather Giovanni and uncle Raffaele were personal physicians to the Pope, and his father, Cavaliere Luigi Battistini, was a professor of anatomy at the University of Rome. Battistini attended the Collegio Bandinelli and later the Istituto dell' Apollinare.
Battistini dropped out of law school to study music with Emilio Terziani (who taught composition) and with Venceslao Persichini (professor of singing) at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia—then the Liceo Musicale of Rome. Battistini worked with conductor Luigi Mancinelli and the composer Augusto Rotoli and consulted with baritone Antonio Cotogni to refine his technique.
Early career
A 22-year-old Battistini made his operatic début at the Teatro Argentina, Rome, as Alfonso in Donizetti's La favorita. The date for this has often been given as 11 December 1878, although 9 November 1878 is the correct date according to certain sources.
During the first three years of his professional career, he toured Italy, singing principal roles in such varied operas as La forza del destino, Il trovatore, Rigoletto, Il Guarany, Gli Ugonotti, Dinorah, L'Africana, I Puritani, Lucia di Lammermoor, Aïda, and Ernani. He also participated in several operatic premières. In 1881 he went to Buenos Aires for the first time, touring South America for more than 12 months. On his return trip, he appeared in Barcelona and Madrid where he sang Figaro in Rossini's comic masterpiece Il Barbiere di Siviglia.
In 1883, he undertook his first visit to the Royal Opera House at London's Covent Garden, where he appeared as Riccardo in Vincenzo Bellini's I Puritani in a stellar cast containing Marcella Sembrich, Francesco Marconi and Edouard de Reszke. He also sang opposite leading soprano Adelina Patti in other Covent Garden productions.
Battistini made his debut at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples in 1886. Two years later, he once more sailed to Buenos Aires to fulfil a series of singing engagements; but this proved to be his last trans-Atlantic excursion, and he never appeared again in South America. He also avoided North America despite receiving overtures from the management of the New York Metropolitan Opera. In his absence, Battistini's core repertoire was allocated to the Italian baritones Mario Ancona, Giuseppe Campanari, Antonio Scotti and, after 1908, Pasquale Amato.
Battistini is said to have developed a permanent horror of oceanic travel due to his adverse experiences on the particularly rough 1888 voyage to Buenos Aires. 1888 was also the year of his début at La Scala, Milan. La Scala's audiences acclaimed him, and he was re-engaged for the next season.
The Russian years
From 1892 onwards, Battistini established himself as an immense favorite with audiences at Russia's two imperial theatres in Saint Petersburg and Moscow: the Mariinsky and the Bolshoi respectively. He returned to Russia regularly, appearing there for 23 seasons in total, and touring extensively elsewhere in eastern Europe, using Warsaw as his stepping-stone. He would journey to Warsaw, Saint Petersburg, Moscow and Odessa like a prince, travelling in his own private rail coach with a retinue of servants and innumerable trunks containing a vast stage wardrobe renowned for its elegance and lavishness. The composer Jules Massenet was prepared to adjust the role of Werther for the baritone range, when Battistini elected to sing it in Saint Petersburg in 1902, such was the singer's prestige.
The industrious Battistini also appeared with some regularity in Milan, Lisbon, Barcelona, Madrid, Berlin, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, and Paris (where he sang for the first time in 1907). But his many social connections in Russia, and the favor that he enjoyed with the imperial family and the nobility, ensured that Russia—more than perhaps even Italy—became his artistic home before the outbreak of the First World War, in 1914. The war led to the destruction, by the Bolsheviks in 1917, of the Tsarist regime and the aristocratic society which had enriched touring Italian opera stars like Battistini and his tenor compatriots Francesco Tamagno, Francesco Marconi, and Angelo Masini. This history-shaping political development, coupled with Battistini's refusal to sing in the Americas, meant that his career after the war's conclusion in 1918 was confined to Western Europe.