He had four siblings: sister Giuditta (who remained unmarried and lived in the family household); brothers Francesco, Andrea (who owned a meat packing business), and Gaspare (later mayor of Melara).

This may be to a certain extent too rigid a description, but the fact remains that, as Cotogni said, his master considered him fit for the stage when there was not a single opera in the current repertoire which he did not know backwards, and when, as he reproachfully added every time I tried to find an excuse for missing a top note, he could be awakened at 3 a.m. and made to give an A-flat mezza voce.

[3]In 1852, after much insistence from Faldi and castrato Domenico Mustafà, among others, he agreed to sign a contract for his debut at Rome's Teatro Metastasio, as Belcore in L'elisir d'amore.

During his time in Nice, Cotogni studied the role of Don Giovanni with his predecessor, Italian baritone Antonio Tamburini, who had left the stage in 1855.

The first role he was engaged to sing was of Antonio in Gaetano Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix in Nice,[4] where the audience greeted him with noises and whistling before he had even opened his mouth.

This same audience fell silent during Antonio's opening aria "Ambo nati in queste valle" and gave him a unanimous, colossal applause after the cadenza, demanding a bis.

By October 1860, Cotogni had sung in 21 theaters, and it was at this point that he reached La Scala, Milan, debuting there in the role of Giovanni Bandino in Bottesini's L'assedio di Firenze.

But Cotogni regained his composure after the premiere, and won over the Milan public with his other roles that season—William Tell, Peri's Vittor Pisani, Rodolfo in La sonnambula, and Ezio in Attila.

At the invitation of Anton Rubinstein, he taught at Saint Petersburg Conservatory (where incidentally he had Sergei Diaghilev as a student)[6] from 1894 to 1898, but he had to abandon this post in consequence of a serious illness,[5] subsequently taking up an appointment in 1899 as a professor at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, where his assistant was Enrico Rosati,[7] who was later to become teacher to Beniamino Gigli.

[note 1] During this time, twelve-year-old Luigi Ricci (who would later become a vocal coach) began accompanying voice lessons given by Cotogni, who had performed several of Verdi's operas under the composer's supervision.

Ricci continued his copious note taking throughout his life and eventually compiled these into a four-part collection entitled Variazioni-cadenze tradizioni per canto (two volumes and two appendices published by Casa Ricordi, 1963).

As a teenager, his voice finally began to break into that of a young man, and the head music teacher Scardovelli forbade him to sing; Cotogni grudgingly obeyed and was silent for about six months.

A full voice that is mellow, flexible, and well-schooled; persona; expression; and mastery of the scene all combine to make Cotogni the model artist, a perfect singer.

Still, however difficult it is to make out Cotogni's contribution, it is all we have left of a singer who for over 40 years dominated the stages in London, Madrid and Lisbon, St. Petersburg and Moscow and throughout Italy."

")[15]—with the Tamagno brothers' recording of the Otello duet "Si pel ciel" reveals the baritone voice to be identical in timbre and production, with its thin and nasal qualities, especially in the passagio.

[2]: 123–128 Cotogni also sang the baritone solo in the "Dies irae" section of Alessandro Busi's Messa da requiem performed in honor of Gioachino Rossini's death on 9 December 1868 at the church of San Giovanni in Monte in Bologna.

That response was not unfamiliar; when he made his public debut in Sant'Eustachio in 1851, the audience's surprise and enthusiasm toward the young Cotogni's solo was so overwhelming that police had to be called in to restore order.

[18] During his career, Cotogni was an especial favorite of Verdi's, who praised him for the beauty, warmth and strength of his voice, as well as for the emotional intensity which he brought to his musical interpretations.

He was also an exponent of the elegant but technically demanding bel canto music of Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti, Vincenzo Bellini, and Saverio Mercadante.

He was particularly proud of his Don Giovanni, a role that he learned from his predecessor, the Italian baritone Antonio Tamburini, and which Cotogni then passed on to the inheritor of his traditions, Mattia Battistini.

[8]: 55–56 Cotogni sang in the company of many of the most famous opera singers of his time—sopranos Adelina Patti, Teresa Stolz, Thérèse Tietjens, Marcella Sembrich, Christina Nilsson, Emma Albani, and Gemma Bellincioni; castrato Alessandro Moreschi; the Marchisio sisters; contralto Sofia Scalchi; tenors Mario, Francesco Marconi, Julián Gayarre, Angelo Masini, Pietro Mongini, Lodovico Graziani, Enrico Tamberlick, and Francesco Tamagno; baritones Charles Santley, Jean-Baptiste Faure, Francesco Graziani, Leone Giraldoni, and Mattia Battistini; and basses Foli, Eraclito Bagagiolo, and Édouard de Reszke.