Aldo Protti (1920–1995) was a fine Italian baritone active in the middle of the last century. His prime coincided with that of a host of other outstanding Italian and American baritones. That is the reason he is not as well remembered as he deserves. But at his best he was a consummate artist who fully realized the great Verdi baritone roles as well as those of the verismo composers. His specialty was Rigoletto which he sang 425 times during his career.
Born in Cremona, Protti studied in Milan before making his professional debut in 1948 as Giorgio Germont in La Traviata. In 1950 he debuted at La Scala. Over the ensuing years he sang in all the major houses of Europe. Though he often sang at La Scala, he appeared most frequently at the Vienna State Opera – about 380 performances.
He sang with the New York City Opera during the 1956 season in Rigoletto, Tosca, and the company premiere of Il trovatore. He sang a single season at Chicago’s Lyric Opera in 1957as Barnaba in La Gioconda and Marcello in La Bohème.
He did not appear with the Met until 1985, shortly before he retired. He gave a single performance as Rigoletto in the New York house and eight more on tour.
He also appeared on numerous complete opera recordings for Decca/London – Verdi’s Otello twice. First under Alberto Erede’s baton and then under Karajan’s.
Protti had a rich and powerful voice which he used to great effect. His top was secure and his dynamic control was equally secure and was used appropriately. He was sometimes compared unfavorably to his Italian contemporaries, Tito Gobbi and Ettore Bastianini, though after listening to his recordings it’s hard to understand why. Below are 10 examples of his singing that show his art to great effect.
First, the two arias from his signature role as Rigoletto. ‘Pari siamo’ is followed by ‘Cortigiani, vil razza dannata’. Protti’s Rigoletto was as Verdi conceived him. Angry at a lifetime of insults and harsh treatment. – about to lose the only thing in his life he valued, his daughter.
The baritone’s great moment in La Traviata is the second-act duet between the elder Germont and Violetta. The aria that follows a little later is there to give a leading baritone a big number. Without it the role would not be able to attract a top-of-the-line singer. It gets the job done. ‘Di Provenza il mar, il suol’ is very well sung by Protti.
‘Il balen’ from Il Trovatore captures the essence of the Count di Luna. Every fiber of his being is consumed by his unfulfilled love for Leonora. It is also one of the most beautiful melodies ever conceived. Protti’s dynamic shading at the piece’s end is admirable.
Iago’s ‘Credo’ at the start of Act 2 of Otello is one of Verdi’s most inspired and insightful creations. It defines Iago as the distillation of evil. It’s not in Shakespeare’s play; rather it’s the invention of Verdi and Boito.
The duet that concludes Act 2 shows the success of Iago’s plan to drive Otello murderously mad with jealousy. ‘Si pel ciel’ is sung by Protti and Mario Del Monaco. The two often appeared together, both in performance and on recordings.
I don’t think Protti ever sang the title role of Verdi’s Falstaff, but he did sing the role of Ford. (There is a website that lists Falstaff among his roles, but it doesn’t say where or when.) He had the right sound for Ford’s ‘E’ sogno’. The aria in Verdi’s mercurial comedy is a throwback the the dramatic exclamations of his earlier period.
Protti’s singing of ‘Largo al factotum’ from Rossini’s Barber shows that he had comic ability in addition to the heavy dramatic parts that made up the bulk of his repertoire.
Finally, a couple of arias by verismo composers. First, the Prologue from Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. This is followed by Carlo Gérard’s aria ‘Nemico della patria’ from Act 3 of Giordano’s Andrea Chénier. The latter is from a live performance in Tokyo in 1961.
Protti was an outstanding singer of the first rank. His presence graced any stage on which he appeared. That America, and New York in particular, saw so little of him was a big loss to America’s opera goers. We are fortunate that he left a rich legacy of recordings.
The photo above the title shows Mario Del Monaco, Herbert von Karajan, and Protti. It was taken at a recording session of Verdi’s Otello.
Those of us who are familiar with the great baritone voices of the last century are indebted to you for devoting an article to Aldo Protti. While I can hear some resemblance to Bastianini’s voice, to my ears the latter did not not have Protti’s mastery of dynamics. Again to my ears, there seems no basis for comparing Protti to Gobbi, who like Antonio Scotti decades before him, was regarded as a “singing actor” due to the limitations of their timbres and range. Compared to the Americans Leonard Warren and Robert Merrill, neither of whom was known for subtlety (Rosa Ponselle said of Merrill that twenty years into his career he was making the same mistakes for which he was criticized in the late-1940s), Warren had perhaps the longest range of any American baritone (Jan Peerce said that Warren used to vocalize to a high-C just to irritate tenors) but that subtlety was not one of his strong points, and he was said to be a terror during rehearsals. Roberta Peters described him to me as “a big baby who threw tantrums if he didn’t get his way.” The one tenor neither he nor Merrill ever treated disrespectfully was Richard Tucker, whom Warren genuinely liked, partly because unlike Peerce who shunned Warren for converting to Catholicism, Tucker told Peerce that Leonard Warren’s religion was nobody’s business but Leonard Warren’s. Late in Tucker’s career, when Sherrill Milnes was having difficulty with stage directions, Tucker told him to “forget all that crap! Just follow me and I’ll show you how Lenny and I did this scene!”