Edoardo Garbin

One of the most important Italian tenors of his day, Garbin created, inter alia, tenor roles in Alberto Franchetti's Cristoforo Colombo, Fenton in Verdi's last opera Falstaff (1893), and Milio in Leoncavallo's Zazà; in 1917, in Rome, he appeared in the world premiere of Renzo Bianchi's Gismonda alongside Ida Quaiatti and Domenico Viglione Borghese.

[1] His success in the Anglosphere (such as England) was (put charitably) limited (he was, by The Times, described as "miserable" as Cavaradossi at Covent Garden in 1908); but in the Latin sphere (South America and Italy) he was in constant demand until his retirement in 1918.

Garbin represents a "half-way-house" between the older bel canto school and the new verist style.

Garbin's style (according to Steane – The Grand Tradition 1971) is a curious mix of the frail and explosive.

At his death, in 1943, Edoardo Garbin was the last male solo vocal artist to have created a part and worked with Giuseppe Verdi – some fifty years' previously in the composer's Fastaff of 1893.