Giacinto Prandelli, 1914 – 2010

Giacinto Prandelli, a supremely elegant and intelligent artist, died last week in Milan at the age of 96. The obituary from Bresciaoggi includes a photo of him with Ingrid Bergman.

Both a tenor and a musician, Prandelli was esteemed by the greatest conductors of his time, including Arturo Toscanini, Victor de Sabata, and Guido Cantelli. He was Belmonte to Maria Callas’s Costanze in Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail at La Scala; and he was Alfredo to her Violetta in 1951 (Bergamo) and again in 1955, after Giuseppe di Stefano abandoned the Visconti staging of Verdi’s La traviata at La Scala.

I don’t know whether Prandelli portrayed Wagner’s Lohengrin on stage, but on disc, as you can hear, he was perfect in this rôle—stately, intensely poetic, possessed of an otherworldly aura.

Riposa in pace, egregio e valente maestro, e grazie.