Giovanni Battista Rubini

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Giovanni Battista Rubini (born April 7, 1794 in Romano di Lombardia, Bergamo, Italy; died March 3, 1854 in Romano di Lombardia) was an Italian tenor, as famous in his time as Enrico Caruso in a later day. His ringing and expressive coloratura dexterity in the highest register of his voice, the tenorino inspired the writing of operatic roles which today are almost impossible to cast.

Rubini began as a violinist at twelve years of age at the Riccardi Theatre in Bergamo. His first appearance as singer was 1814 in Pavia in Le lagrime d'una vedova by Pietro Generali. After ten years in Naples, 1815-31, during which he scored spectacular successes in Paris, 1825-26, in Rossini operas, he moved permanently to Paris, performing in Rossini's La Cenerentola, Otello, and La donna del lago and dividing his time between Paris (autumn and winter) and London (spring). His special relation with Vincenzo Bellini began with Bianca e Gernando (1826) and continued until I puritani (1835), when he was one of the long-remembered "Puritani quartet" of Giulia Grisi, Rubini, Antonio Tamburini and Luigi Lablache, for whose voices the opera was written. The four appeared together in Donizetti's Marino Faliero the same season, then travelled to London with Michael Balfe. Rubini was admitted as an honorary member of the Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna and retired with a great fortune in 1845.

As a singer Rubini was the major early exponent of the Romantic style of Vincenzo Bellini and Gaetano Donizetti. Rubini is remembered as an extraordinary bel canto singer, one of the most famous singers in Europe in the 1830s and 40s.^[1]

[edit] References

• Stefan Zucker, “Last of a Breed: Giovanni Battista Rubini Ruled as the Paragon of Virtuoso Tenors, King of the High F’s”, Opera News, February 13, 1982. Reprinted in Zucker, The Origins of Modern Tenor Singing.
• Henry Pleasants, "Giovanni Battista Rubini (1794–1854)", Opera Quarterly 10.2, pp 101-04
• (Baltimore Opera Comnpany) La Sonnambula: James Harp, "Rubini, the tenor"