Talk:Fernando De Lucia

1896-Milan-Tosca
I've added a tag to the assertion that De Lucia appeared in Tosca in Milan in 1896, replacing an technically-inappropriate, albeit apropos, editorial comment inserted by an IP editor. The problem arises from the fact that Tosca premiered in Rome in January, 1900, it thus being extremely unlikely that De Lucia appeared in it in Milan four years earlier. While the opera was soon thereafter performed in Milan (March, 1900), I can find no record that De Lucia appeared in it as Cavaradossi until July 12, 1900, at Covent Garden in London, per several different sources available through Google Books.

The original of this text, which was part of the text of the article when it was first created by Dr Steven Plunkett, read "In 1896 in Milan he appeared as Cavaradossi in La Tosca" (emphasis added) but was inline-unsourced. (Plunkett provided a list of sources at the foot of the article in this edit just the following day, but did not provide inline links to specific text.) La Tosca is equally unlikely for De Lucia since La Tosca, while extant in 1896 (indeed, Puccini saw it in Milan sometime before 1889, per our Tosca article), was not an sung opera but a spoken stage play and, though it had opera connections (the character Floria Tosca is an opera singer), the character Cavaradossi was a painter, not a singer, and De Lucia's singing career was well-established by 1896. Also, per our Tosca article, Puccini did not acquire the rights to convert La Tosca into an opera until August, 1985, and worked on it for four years; it is thus equally unlikely that De Lucia might have performed in a preview or trial version of the opera in Milan in 1896.

Perhaps in recognition of those facts, La Tosca was subsequently changed to just Tosca in this edit by Kleinzach, but was still inline-unsourced. The current inline source given for that sentence was given in this edit by Eebahgum, but I don't have access to that source, so I can't judge whether or not it supports the text (but even if it does, it's pretty clearly wrong).

I've simply tagged this, rather than correcting it, because while I'm pretty close to being absolutely sure this is wrong, I'm not absolutely sure what is right. Regards, TransporterMan  ( TALK ) 15:00, 8 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Thankyou for pointing this out. First, User:Eebahgum is User:Dr Steven Plunkett - in pursuit of a quiet life, I renamed my wikipedia editor account in about 2007. Consequently in 2008, following a period of illness, I was trying to upgrade my old article by adding in the inline citations loosely covered by the reference list in the earlier version, probably without very critical attention. Scott 1977, pp. 124-25 (the reference for this mysterious attribution) reads as follows: "In Italy, at his La Scala debut in 1895, he reaffirmed himself in the verismo repertory, creating the leading role in Mascagni's Silvano and appearing in the first performances there of Massenet's La Navarraise and Puccini's Boheme. In London, too, he was the first Rodolfo, but the part had to wait for Caruso and it was Melba who got the notices. The following year he was Cavaradossi and then tried Almaviva once more, but 'the strident quality of his voice' (cites H. Rosenthal, Two Centuries of Opera (1958), p. 216) was thought 'far better suited to the modern music'.(cites ibid.)" Evidently these Rosenthal comments (which I haven't read) refer to the dislike of his Almaviva. So the statement 'The following year he was Cavaradossi' falls back on the context, and since Scott can't mean 'the year after 1895', he must mean, 'the year after de Lucia sang Rodolfo in London'. Evidently I read it carelessly, or went astray - I was certainly not trying to prove a special case that de Lucia sang Cavaradossi before the premiere. Hence I will remove the statement, with apologies, and thanks indeed for identifying my error.Eebahgum (talk) 09:12, 9 October 2014 (UTC)