BENIAMINO GIGLI

Beniamino Gigli won the international singing competition in Parma Italy in 1914, he was then 24 years old.

For Gigli, the son of a shoemaker in Recanati Italy it was the start of a spiraling career in opera which took him to the top of the operatic world in just a few years.
After his professional debut as Enzo in La Gioconda on October 15th 1915 , all the major Italian Opera Houses wanted him.
In 1919 he made his first tour of South America he was then engaged at The Metropolitan Opera House.

By then the "Golden Curtain " had begun to fall for Enrico Caruso.
On Christmas Eve 1920, just after Gigli's debut, Caruso sang his very last performance,he returned to Naples very ill and was to die in 1921.

Gigli was haunted by Caruso's shadow, however he managed to establish his own stature as an opera star in his own right.
His voice is a lyric tenor of peculiar warmth and mellowness.

Beniamino left the Metropolitan Opera in 1939 over a salary dispute, and continued his career in Italy in the 1940s
He returned to America during his World wide farewell tour in 1955, by then he was sixty five years old and much of his vocal beauty was still there.

He died in Rome in November 1957 he suffered a heart attack combined with diebetes and a bad bout of asian flu

Today he remains one of the finest Tenors in living history and his recordings are still selling well for over four decades after his death.

BENIAMINO GIGLI

The Gigli Family Tomb in Recanati Italy

Beniamino Gigli
"The Peoples Singer"