Mattia Battistini
His grandfather Giovanni and uncle Raffaele were personal physicians to the Pope, and his father, Cavaliere Luigi Battistini, was a professor of anatomy at the University of Rome.
Battistini dropped out of law school to study music with Emilio Terziani (who taught composition) and with Venceslao Persichini (professor of singing) at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia—then the Liceo Musicale of Rome.
In 1883, he undertook his first visit to the Royal Opera House at London's Covent Garden, where he appeared as Riccardo in Vincenzo Bellini's I Puritani in a stellar cast containing Marcella Sembrich, Francesco Marconi, and Edouard de Reszke.
In his absence, Battistini's core repertoire was allocated to the Italian baritones Mario Ancona, Giuseppe Campanari, Antonio Scotti, and after 1908 Pasquale Amato.
He would journey to Warsaw, Saint Petersburg, Moscow, and Odessa like a prince, traveling in his private rail coach with a retinue of servants and innumerable trunks containing a vast stage wardrobe renowned for its elegance and lavishness.
The composer Jules Massenet was prepared to adjust the role of Werther for the baritone range when Battistini elected to sing it in Saint Petersburg in 1902, such was the singer's prestige.
Battistini's choice of bride had befitted his esteemed social status in Tsarist Russia and the West; he married a Spanish noblewoman, Doña Dolores de Figueroa y Solís, who was the offspring of a marquis and a cousin of Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val.
For around ten years, Battistini and Varvara corresponded and worked out details of Petya's upbringing, eventually enrolling him at the Collegio Nazareno under the name Pietro Kovalensky.
Amongst the arsenal of vocal weapons that he displays on record was the perfect blending of his registers coupled with the sophisticated use of ornamentation, portamento, and fil di voce, as well as an array of rubato and legato effects.
Consequently, his discs provide a retrospective guide to Italian singing practice of the early-to-mid-19th century (the era of Gaetano Donizetti and Vincenzo Bellini)—as well as exemplifying the "grand manner" style of vocalism for which much Romantic operatic music was written.
He is not averse, however, to showing off his voice by prolonging top notes or embellishing the written score with a liberality that might surprise 21st-century listeners who are imbued with the modern notion that a composer's work is sacrosanct.
For an evaluation of Battistini's technique, style, and legacy on disc, see his entry in Volume One of Michael Scott's survey The Record of Singing (published by Duckworth, London, 1977, ISBN 978-0-7156-1030-5).
Milano, Barbini; Karl Josef Kutsch and Leo Riemens, editors (2000): Großes Sängerlexikon Basel, Saur; Lancellotti, A (1942): Le voci d' oro.
Rome, Tiber; and Palmeggiani, Francesco (1977): Mattia Battistini, il re dei baritoni Milano, Stampa d' Oggi Editrice, 1949 (reprinted with discography, W.R. Moran, editor, New York, Arno Press).
