Mario Sammarco
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(Giuseppe) Mario Sammarco (13 December 1873 – 24 January 1930) was an Italian operatic baritone noted for his acting ability.
Sammarco was born in Palermo, Sicily. At a young age he joined a choral class and took a few singing lessons but was dissuaded from pursuing music, the teacher saying that his voice was too small. It wasn't until he took the part of Valentine in an amateur performance of Faust that he was encouraged, at which point he began serious vocal study with Antonio Cantelli. He later studied singing with Giorgio M. Sulli.[1]
Sammarco made his professional debut in the fourth and final version of Puccini's Le Villi on November 7, 1889 at the Teatro Dal Verme, Milan. He subsequently sang to acclaim in at La Scala (Italy's most celebrated theatre), Buenos Aires, and London. Between 1904 and 1919 he appeared intermittently, in 26 different roles, at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
In New York City, he was hired by Oscar Hammerstein I for his Manhattan Opera Company as a replacement for the great French singing-actor Maurice Renaud. He sang with the Manhattan company in 1908–1910, becoming its principal Italian baritone, but he never 'graduated' to the rival Metropolitan Opera.
Sammarco next joined the Chicago–Philadelphia opera company. His career there continued smoothly enough until 1913 when he encountered a disapproving Mary Garden in a Chicago production of Tosca. The soprano requested that he be replaced; but after he named some of his former distinguished (and uncomplaining) Tosca partners, notably Emmy Destinn, the performances proceeded to be given to critical success.
His final operatic appearances were at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples in 1919.
Admired for his versatility, he was at home in bel canto roles—Figaro, Enrico, Antonio in Linda di Chamounix, Alfonso in La favorita—and classic Verdian roles—from Carlo of Ernani, Rigoletto, Germont, and Renato to Iago and Falstaff—and in the more modern and verismo like Tosca and Pagliacci. He was an important part of this era's operatic life, creating the roles of Gerard in Giordano's Andrea Chénier in 1896, Cascart in Leoncavallo's Zazà in 1900, and Wurms in Franchetti's Germania.
Sammarco was active during an era that was thronged with Italian baritones of exceptional ability. It was no small achievement for him to carve out a lucrative international career in the face of powerful competition from the likes of Mattia Battistini, Antonio Magini-Coletti, Giuseppe Campanari, Mario Ancona, Giuseppe Pacini, Antonio Scotti, Eugenio Giraldoni, Riccardo Stracciari, Titta Ruffo, Domenico Viglione Borghese, Pasquale Amato and Carlo Galeffi.
He taught singing after retiring from the stage and died in Milan. One of his pupils was Sándor Svéd.
