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          The last engagement of an Italian dance company in Manila  -highlighted by  contemporary choreographic works inspired by legendary Italian film-maker Federico Fellini --  brought back memories of lasting musical ties between the Philippines and Italy.

          The dance event was called  I Bislacchi Omaggio a Fellini, Eccentrics, Homage to Fellini, a production of the Italian dance company Compagnia Artemis Danza mounted at the he CCP main theater last year.

           Unraveled in dance form were images of La Dolce Vita*'s famous Flying Christ and Trevi Fountain scenes, La Strada's motley collection of circus characters, 8 1/2's rambling dreams and fantasies  conceived and choreographed by Monica Casadei, artistic director of Compagnia Artemis Danza.

          Of interest to music lovers were the time film score  of Italian composer Nino Rota which was used to accompany the dancers of Compagnia Artemis Danza. Like it or not, the dance concert certainly evoked images, scenes and characters from  popular  Fellini films, namely La Strada, Amarconi, La Dolce Vita, Intervista, Casanova, and 8 1/2.

           The Fellini films were much appreciated in the Philippines in the 70s. A favorite was Fellini's Roma which satirized Catholic religious rituals by way of a fashion show of holy vestments complete with electric bulbs flashing.

            In June last year, Italian violinist Uto Ughi enchanted Manilans and proved Italian artists make for the best ambassador of goodwill than Italian politicians.

           For the record, the Filipino-Italian ties started long before the advent of Filipino-Italian associations headed by Filipino businessmen promoting Italian shoes, wine and perfume.

         The country’s first operatic divas – Isang Tapales and Jovita Fuentes (the latter declared a National Artist for Music) made their first international debuts in Italy in 1924  as Cio Cio San in the Puccini opera,  Madama Butterfly.

          In 1932, a Filipino bass baritone named Jose Mossesgeld Santiago-Font made his La Scala debut as Sparafucile in the Verdi opera, Rigoletto. He was the first Filipino to sing in that revered Milan theater. The second Filipino singer to make it at La Scala was tenor Arthur Espiritu from Tanay, Rizal who sang Ferrando in the Mozart opera, Cosi fan tutte in 2007.

          On the other hand, Maestra  Tapales’s international career started in Europe from Milan to Florence to Lisbon , Rio del Janerio, Sao Paulo , Paris , Brussels , Warsaw , Marseilles , Nice and even in such places as Riga and Malta


         For the record, Tapales had sung 1,047 performances of Madama Butterfly (as Cio Cio San), more than 200 Bohemes (as Mimi) and Pagliacci (as Nedda) and over hundred Iris the composer of which, Pietro Mascagni, also composed Cavalleria Rusticana.

        Tapales was the first Filipino soprano to sing with such world-famous Italian  tenors as Giacomo Lauri-Volpi and Beniamino Gigli who inherited the crown of Enrico Caruso before the electronic age of Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti.

        Tapales was also be the first Filipina to sing in Pavarotti’s hometown in Modena , Italy where she sang Mascagni’s Iris with Pavarotti’s opera idol, Beniamino Gigli.

        Tapales met Gigli in the Royal Opera House of Cairo in Egypt where the latter sang Kioto (again in the opera, Iris). They met again at the Opera Comique in Paris where she sang Butterfly with the Italian tenor as his Pinkerton. (Gigli was the first tenor to sing the lead role in Giordano’s Andrea Chenier on March 7, 1920). When Gigli died in 1957, Tapales had said she “died a little.”

         Pavarotti recalled in his autobiography that he met the legendary Gigli when he was only 12. He actually grew up with Gigli’s recordings bought by his father. When Pavarotti met Gigli, the latter was already in his 50s but could still sing very well. Pavarotti ran to him after a rehearsal and told him – he too – wanted to be a tenor. Gigli patted his hand and said, “Bravo! Ragazzino. That is a fine ambition but you must work very hard.”

        Even Tapales’s love life was opera-colored. She met her first husband, polish baritone George Ciapliz, on the seventh night of a 10-day run of Madama Butterfly, where he played Sharpless.

        Six months after that encounter, they got married in the church of St. Babbila in Milan where some 30 Filipinas in the city became her maids of honor. The marriage lasted only three years. Her second marriage to a Filipino, Enrique Gonzales, was blessed with three children.

        When  Pavarotti performed in Manila in 1994, he actually completed the opera cycle started by his first teacher, Arrigo Pola, who sang two full-length operas mounted at the Far Eastern University (FEU) Auditorium in the early 50s.

         As it turned out, Pavarotti’s teacher not just taught but appeared in several operas in Manila in the 1950s.

        In the old souvenir programs of the Manila Symphony at the neglected Manila Metropolitan Theater, Pola  endorsed San Miguel beer, sang in a Filipino film and played  the role of Manrico in the 1953 staging of Verdi’s Il Trovatore presented by a Filipino  opera company chaired by Charito Planas with Maestra Isang Tapales as artistic director.

        The 1953 Trovatore had the Leonora of soprano Remedios Bosch Jimenez   who was cited Soprano of the Year for that performance.

         Pola’s Leonora in Il Trovatore  was  also known as the mother of Rosemarie “Baby” Arenas who  was chairperson of Pavarotti’s Manila concert committee. Arenas, who got all kinds of flaks for her role in the Pavarotti concert,  was actually the most qualified to handle the tenor’s Philippine debut as her mother had connections with the living legend’s first teacher. “I was only about six or seven when Pola came here,” Arenas said. My mother rented an entire apartment for both Pola and Tagliavini as it was expensive at the time to billet them in hotels as luxurious as Manila Hilton. I am a child of opera knowledgeable enough to correct Senator Ople’s impressions that an operatic aria can be heard in less than five minutes with all the cadenzas.”

        (The late Ople denounced the Pavarotti concert as expensive and the lowest priced ticket he said was the equivalent of a janitor’s monthly salary.)

        The late Tapales  recalled that performance thus: “Pola was good even if he was a lyric tenor and that Trovatore actually called for a dramatic tenor. But he was outshone by his Leonora, our very own Remedios Bosch Jimenez.”    .

        Jimenez -- when she was still alive had  -- vivid memories of Pola. “Pola liked my voice well enough to give me a scholarship. I couldn’t forget the night I first heard him in the house of Maestra Isang (Tapales). He sang Recondita armonia from Tosca. The voice was sweet and he sang with real feelings. We – his students – cried from the sheer power of that voice.”

         On the other hand, the voice of Jimenez also impressed Ferrucio Tagliavini he proposed that they sing La Boheme but the plan didn’t materialize (he didn’t comeback to Manila ). He is the same Tagliavini who was Maria Callas’s Edgardo in the widely praised EMI recording of Lucia di Lammermoor.

         What Jimenez could not forget was the night she heard Tagliavini sang Brahms’s Lullabye all exquisite pianissimo. She was sleepless over the beautiful singing for sometime.

        Pavarotti would later encounter Tagliavini in one of his very first concerts in Modena . He recalled in  his  autobiography: “Tagliavini is from Reggio but of course, was and is famous all over the world. He must have been in his late forties then. He was one of my idols. It is difficult to explain the sensation, the emotion you feel when you are about to have the audacity to claim to be an operatic tenor and to be looking in to the face of one of the foremost operatic tenors of the day. I nearly passed out from nervousness.”

       Meanwhile, with  Tapales as her coach,  Jimenez set out to hurdle the first operatic challenge with Pavarotti’s teacher as her Manrico in Il Trovatore. Pola was hired through the Ferrone agency in Milan and he was paid P5, 000 per performance in 1953 (exchange rate at the time was a dollar to a peso). The rehearsals started in the morning, resuming in the afternoon until close to midnight.

       Sometime in 1988,  Pola wanted to come back to Manila , conduct a voice workshop and sing in an intimate recital – in his late 70s! He wrote to CCP, was turned down by the Performing Arts Development for lack of funds.

      Teddy Co, a film enthusiast, confirmed   Pola actually sang in a Filipino movie and he knew where to find the film.Pola’s  proposed historic return engagement in Manila in the  late 80s never took off for lack of sponsors.

       Did Pavarotti actually include the Philippines in his tight worldwide commitments because his teacher told him about his gifted Filipino voice students?

       One of Pavarotti’s Turandot in San Francisco Opera, soprano Montserrat Caballe, performed at the CCP and at the Manila Metropolitan Theater in 1979

      Two years later , a Filipino tenor named Noel Velasco made opera headlines by winning the First Luciano Pavarotti International Voice Competitions in Philadelphia in 1981. Another winner of the Pavarotti competition was a Chinese mezzo Liang Ning whose last recital in Manila in June 1991 was highlighted by Pinatubo ashes falling on the CCP rooftops and highlighted by a slight volcanic tremor in the middle of a Faure art song.

        Pavarotti competition prize-winner Noel Velasco who is also the second Filipino (after Maestra Isang Tapales) to sing at Paris Opera (as Count Almaviva in Rossini’s Barber of Seville) showed off his prize-winning from by singing “Our Father” in the second (or was it third) Marcos inaugural at Luneta grandstand and Che gelida manina (from La Boheme)  in an outdoor concert with the  Metro Manila Symphony Orchestra.

       The Philadelphia-based competition was Velasco’s first encounter with Pavarotti whom the Filipino tenor found very amiable. “I admired him as an artist,” Velasco  said after winning the competition. “He opens his whole heart to the people when he sings.”

       Opera fans in Philadelphia paid $8 to $15 for the opportunity to hear the finalists and probably to see Pavarotti in person. Pavarotti actually got the audience into the act by saying, “I trust my ears but I also trust a multitude of ears.”

       As it turned out, the Filipino tenor won the most prolonged applause and a grin from Pavarotti. A music reporter wrote that Velasco was the only contestant who was able to crack Pavarotti’s mandarin reserve.

      “He was singing all my arias,” Pavarotti explained later. “I couldn’t help smiling. I knew what he was going through.”

       Velasco remarked there and then: “Don’t you think it was cruel of him asking me to sing Ah mes ami (an aria with nine demanding high Cs) right after Che Gelida manina (the high C in this Boheme aria is also a monster )?” Velasco said after learning he was one of the winners. By cruel, Velasco meant Pavarotti demanded an inordinate amount of high Cs from him during the brief audition.

       Pavarotti passed away in 2007 and so did one of his favorite leading  ladies in opera, Dame Joan Sutherland, who died last November 10, 2010, the same week the Filipino baritone Gamaliel Viray moved on.

       Soprano Evelyn Mandac -- to this date  still the first and the last Filipino to sing at the Metropolitan Opera of New York -- remembers both Pavarotti and Sutherland thus:” Two great artists such as Pavarotti and Dame Joan Sutherland are sorely missed. They were the great voices that inspired and touched deeply the world and especially the singers who aspired to reach their highest potential. I continue to marvel at their voices and artistry and often share with my students as models of marvelous technique and consummate artistry.  During my busy singing career I met Luciano (Pavarotti) during a rehearsal of Meyerbeer's L'Africaine with the San Francisco Opera. He was truly a person larger than life and full of fun and mischief. He gave a party of which I was invited together with some of the cast of L'Africaine. He loves to cook and he prepared a pasta dish that was quite memorable.As for Dame Joan Sutherland, I met her in a rehearsal of Handel's Rodelinda during the Holland opera Festival sometime in the 70's. She was very gentle kind and had a very dry sense of humor. I would meet her in many music parties and always found her a quite down to earth person and generous in the compliments she gives you with your performance.I always felt fortunate to have heard and have met these two towering artists of this century.”

       The last Filipino artist Pavarotti encountered was conductor Julian Quirit who conducted his last concert in Australia . Quirit who, helped score the Australian hit film, “Crocodile Dundee” was also the first Filipino conductor to conduct –not just Pavarotti – but his opera pal, Jose Carreras, all in Australia .

       Quirit –who once conducted the short-lived San Miguel Philharmonic – was in awe of Pavarotti. He got his first taste of the sensitive requirements of the human voice when the tenor ordered a sudden change of venue from Melbourne ’s Tennis Center to Pavarotti’s hotel because the former venue was too cold for the opera legend. In the new hotel venue, air conditioning was switched off temporarily.

      “I liked his voice instantly,” Quirit  said. “He was really terrific.”

       One of Pavarotti’s favorite leading ladies in opera was another Italian  opera icon , Mirella Freni who was last heard opposite Placido Domingo in the triple bill opening season of the Washington D.C. based National Opera (the second act of Giordani’s Fedora with Mirella Freni, the final act of Verdi’s Otello and the final act of Lehar’s The Merry Widow). By coincidence, Domingo’s cover in in that production was Filipino tenor  Otoniel Gonzaga.

       One of the country’s emerging divas, Rachelle Gerodias, took master classes from Freni in Italy . In one session, Freni noted that the Filipino soprano sounded more Italian than real Italian singers. After her triumphant Liu (Turandot) in Vienna , Gerodias debuted last week as Rosina in the Korean production of Barber of Seville at the Daegu Opera House in Korea .

       The La Scala debuts of   baritone Jose Mossesgeld Santiago-Font in 1932 and  tenor Arthur Espiritu in 2007  are proof that Filipino talents are equal to the best in the world.

       Even Italy ’s foremost mezzo, Cecilia Bartoli, got the experience of her life when  the country’s leading pianist, Cecile Licad,  beautifully accompanied her in the Mostly Mozart Festival in Tokyo in the mid-90s.

       Like it or not, the Filipino-Italian connections which  started in the visit of Italian opera companies at the turn of the century peaked in the 1920s and 30s with the emergence of first-rate Filipino singers invading Italian opera houses including the most-feared La Scala (even the likes of Pavarotti and Maria Callas get booed in this theater.)

        Italy ’s operatic star of the 1920s and 30s, soprano Amelita Gulli-Curci, also sang at the Manila Metropolitan Theater and appeared in several operatic productions with the Philippines ’s foremost bass baritone, Jose Mossessgeld Santiago Font in Milan .

        Renata Tebaldi, supposedly Maria Callas's fierce rival, sang in Manila in the 70s with Franco Corelli, anotheidol of Pavarotti.

       The goddess of opera that she was, Tebaldi proved she was human too when she cracked in a Manon Lescaut aria at the Philamlife Theater. After that unfortunate incident, she massaged her throat with her hands, genuflected and bowed to ask for apology. She was greeted -- not with boos-- but with a grand applause.

        That was the time Manila was also referred  to as  the “ Milan of the Orient” because of the proliferation of opera productions  and the emergence of  world-class Filipino operatic talents.

         Recalled baritone Nomer Son who has witnessed the golden age of opera in the Philippines : The currency ex rate in the 50s has always been P2.00 to $1.00 until President Macapagal freed the peso which immediately depreciated to P4.00 to the $.  That is why when I was studying in the United States  in the late 50s,  I could buy a box ticket to watch Zinka, (Renata) Tebaldi, Rise Steven, Jan Peerce, Mario del Monaco and many others  at the old Metropolitan Opera House in New York for P15.00 ($7.50).  However, it cost only P5.00 to watch at 10:00 am after my Sunday ROTC at UST to walk over to Morayta to see all of Pola's performances at FEU theater.  There, on another Sunday, I also saw the only opera starred and produced by Jose Mossesgeld Santiago Font: FAUST also for 5 bucks.  AT about the same time, a 3rd run movie house along Echague repeatedly showed the Movie FAUST starring Ferrucio Tagliavini with ITALO TAJO as Mephistopheles.  I saw all the reruns which at P0.50 was a steal.  Italo was in RP in 1979 as the Sacristan in Tosca at the CCP."

       Indeed, the Filipino-Italian musical ties goes back a long way even before the advent of  Armani suits and Prada bags.      

 

 

Munting Nayon News Magazine