Talk:Antonio Paoli

This article is hilarious
One of the most scary, fawning, self-centered, nationalistic, unbalanced things I have ever read. Even the most obsessive admirers of singers such as Callas or Del Monaco will at least admit that SOME people have their comments about their idols. The Paoli people, however, will not have ANYTHING said about their God. This article is biased and obsessive. Perhaps it is a Puerto-Rican nationalist thing - after all, is Puerto Rico even regarded as a real country?; I can understand their lack of identity and need to promote anyone who makes an international career. But this article is just hagiography and hyperbole. Very sad. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.196.233.25 (talk) 20:06, 25 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Who is this? 2600:381:FEE0:1CA2:AC63:6F:D4ED:CC2B (talk) 08:04, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

I have just clicked on the page of the person (Tony The Marine) who 'runs this page' and my worst fears are confirmed. I invite any reader to look at his Wikipedia page - military uniform (why take the name 'the Marine?') and all sorts of highly worrying pompous, embarassingly self serving stuff from a person who boasts of having a degree in business studies (cum laudae indeed)from some University I have never heard of. This Paoli page is just part of his strange world. But this is not a personal attack on him - just rather proves the point that he is biased and his interest is to promote Puerto Rico come-what-may. We do not want people like that writing history - we want balance not propaganda. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.196.233.25 (talk) 20:06, 25 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Please reach out 2600:381:FEE0:1CA2:AC63:6F:D4ED:CC2B (talk) 08:05, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
 * His house in PR is a museum now and I’ve been there 2600:381:FEE0:1CA2:AC63:6F:D4ED:CC2B (talk) 08:07, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Why is this article still locked?
Yes, why - it still reads as a worship to Paoli with nothing critical of the man and the artist. It uses modern quotes to worship him and yet has rejected accepted critical works (see history). Compare this with other articles (on Titta Ruffo and Jose Carreras) and you see that the Paoli article is not balanced. How it got its "good article" "award" I cannot fthom - it's the Antoio Paoli fan club. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.24.183.231 (talk) 11:44, 23 October 2011 (UTC)


 * The article on Paoli presents him as what the literature says he was; that's why it achieved GA status while Titta Ruffo and Jose Carreras' articles have not. Quite simply, it passed muster through the rigourous process that brought it up to GA.


 * Why is it (conditionally) locked? Precisely because vandals, under the cover of anonymous IP adresseses (and, imo, most possibly belonging to other tenors' "fan clubs" as you have rightly stated) would not stop vandalising it.


 * You can edit the article; the only condition is that you sign in as a registered user. The real question here should be, why in the world does wikipedia allow free editing from anonymous IP addresses? Go anywhere in the Internet and you will see that before you can write anything anywhere you must first register. You may want to consider doing that if you wish to edit the article.


 * As another venue, I have seen conditionally-locked articles where non-registered users simply submit material (or their opinions) via this discussion page, and then registered users monitoring the article will take action on the submission.


 * My name is Mercy11 (talk) 13:54, 23 October 2011 (UTC), and I approve this message.

Mercy: Your name is nationalistic, childish, uneducated, control freak. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.30.200.248 (talk) 13:43, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Here we go again
This article is once more protected because the same user that in 2010 and 2011 removed content without any justification is doing so again. The user has returned with the only intention of removing content of this article and, with what maybe considered as POV, to criticize and downgrade the subject. Please read what Mercy11 wrote above in 2011. Thank you, Tony the Marine (talk) 06:33, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

The justification (and it is not the same user from 2010/2011) is that this article is grossly biased - unlike articles regarding many other great singers. Part of the world of admiration of an artist is to recognise his faults or at least set out the (perhaps wrongly held) views of others. You are blind to the Anglo-Saxon world who perhaps wrongly view Paoli as a crude singer often comically out of tune and wobbly. As I say they may be wrong, but that is the general view in the USA and England. Indeed certain Italian critics of the time thought him provincial and pompously self-centered, wooden in his acting etc.

A perfect example is his recording of Apri la tua finestra from Mascagni's Iris - Paoli starts thoughtfully and beautifully, observing the piano markings of the composer, then he goes sadly out of tune, forcing the notes in his usual barnstorming way. A wonderful performance in the first bars, then just terrible.

Whoever runs this page ought at least to do some research and not control it as some form of propaganda exercise for his own perhaps ego or nationalist interests. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.196.233.25 (talk) 20:24, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Dubious sourcing
Looking at this article, I was surprised to find that Antonio Paoli was allegedly considered better than Caruso in his time, and wondered what the source for this and many of the other seemingly grandiose claims made about this tenor's fame and ability could be. Compared to contemporaries like Caruso, Bonci, Zenatello, Martinelli, Anselmi, Viñas, etc. etc... Paoli isn't mentioned much at all in opera literature. He did make 53 recordings for the Gramophone Company, of which 24 were later reissued by the Gramophone Co. on 12 double-sided records in the HMV "DA" and "DB" series. Only a few of his records appear to have been repressed on double-sided discs by Victor in the United States. Conversely, all of Caruso's Gramophone Co. records were continuously in print for decades after his death. Paoli's recordings seem to be quite rare today, indicating that they were not great sellers. Searching on Google Books, one struggles to find mentions of Paoli in books about opera that aren't footnotes or numerical listings from discographies. The part about Paoli being placed 20 ft. away from the gramophone on the recordings of "I Pagliacci" is very dubious. Much documentation of the acoustic recording process exists and it simply didn't work in such a way that would permit someone standing so far from the horn to be properly heard. This is easily verifiable.

European opera houses also did not close en masse during WWI. A quick google search reveals that the San Carlo in Napoli appears to have remained open for the entirety of the war. La Scala remained open until the end of the war, though from early 1918 productions were limited to three nights per week. According to this peer-reviewed article, the situation in Italy can be summed up thusly: "Alcuni teatri vengono chiusi, pur se in momenti circoscritti, la maggior parte dei quali nella fase conclusiva del conflitto." (Some theaters are closed, albeit for a limited time only, and mostly in the final phase of the conflict.)

The main source for most of the claims made about this tenor is not a history - it's an application to have Paoli's house in Puerto Rico declared a National Historic Site. The application in turn primarily cites a book entitled Antonio Paoli, El león de Ponce by Jesús M. López - also used separately as a reference in this article - which according to this review is outright fiction. Apparently it cites opera publications that never existed, puts Paoli in opera houses that were not yet built and alleges that he sang with performers who were still toddlers at the time. Is there another secondary source that can support the claims made here? Wannabe rockstar (talk) 14:05, 13 August 2023 (UTC)