Mario Ancona

On 21 May 1892, Ancona was asked to create the part of Silvio in the first performance of Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, which took place at Milan's Teatro Dal Verme with Arturo Toscanini conducting.

Music critics on both sides of the Atlantic commended Ancona on his elegant singing style and beautiful voice, with its easy top register and open-throated emission of homogeneous tone.

The fact that Ancona was able to establish himself as a major singer in the face of intense competition from a host of other first-class baritones is a testament to his sheer quality as a vocalist.

His style and technique were particularly well suited to the operas of Verdi, and to the bel canto works composed by Bellini and Donizetti (such as I Puritani, Lucia di Lammermoor and La favorite).

Ancona also undertook roles composed by Leoncavallo (Silvio and Tonio), Puccini (Lescaut and Marcello), Mascagni (Alfio and David in L'amico Fritz), Giordano (Gerard in Andrea Chénier), Mozart (Don Giovanni and Figaro) and Wagner (Wolfram, Telramund and even, on occasion, Hans Sachs).

He appeared, too, in French operas written by Meyerbeer, Gounod, Bizet and, as we have seen, Massenet, performing such parts as Nevers, Hoël, Scindia, Escamillo, Zurga and Valentin.

An extensive collection of documents, photographs and other items relating to Ancona's career is preserved at Stanford University's Archive of Recorded Sound in California.

Fortunately, however, Ancona's thoroughbred voice lives on in a series of gramophone recordings which he made during the first decade of the 20th century for Pathé in 1905–06 and, more rewardingly, for the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1907–08.