Rolando Panerai
Operatic baritone who often performed with Callas and sang more than 150 roles over 65 years
ROLANDO PANERAI, who has died aged 95, was an Italian baritone who was often seen in the opera house and heard on record alongside Maria Callas and Giuseppe di Stefano; he made his stage debut in 1946 in Florence and was still performing 65 years later when he appeared in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi in Genoa.
Panerai, tall, well-built and an excellent actor, was one of the opera world’s most prolific artists, with a repertoire of more than 150 mainly Italian operas. Verdi’s Falstaff was one of his favourites. As a young man he appeared as Ford, recording the role three times, twice for Herbert von Karajan and once for Leonard Bernstein, and later in the title role which he recorded with Colin Davis.
He recalled Maria Callas as “a good friend and colleague”, telling how once they were appearing in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor at La Scala conducted by von Karajan, but during their duets they were unable to see the conductor because of a veil in front of the proscenium arch.
Maria Callas asked for it to be removed, but von Karajan insisted that it had to remain because of the lighting: “So she said to him, ‘Then you sing it’ [and] walked off.” Eventually the show went ahead without the veil.
Rolando Panerai was born in Campi Bisenzio, near Florence, on October 17 1924, one of four brothers. As a youngster he was a keen cyclist. He studied in Florence and Milan, but insisted that the stage itself was his most important teacher. “Your must study it, love it, respect. It is a living thing,” he said.
He made his debut as Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor at Florence in 1946. “It is said that your first love you never forget, and I never forgot that night,” he said. Over the next few years he sang on several occasions at Naples before appearing in 1951 as the High Priest in Saint-saëns’s Samson et Dalila at La Scala, where he sang regularly for 25 years. “La Scala is a point of arrival for all singers and opens many doors for artistic credibility,” he said.
As a young man
Panerai would fill his time between engagements by running his own farm. “[He] actually worked the farm,” von Karajan recalled in amazement. “Drove the tractors. Everything.”
Panerai appeared in the first opera to be shown on Italian television, a production of Rossini’s The Barber of
Seville conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini that was broadcast by RAI in April 1954; some 46 years later he sang in a live broadcast of Verdi’s La
traviata from Paris that was seen worldwide.
British audiences heard him at Covent Garden in May 1960 as Figaro in The Barber of
Seville alongside Teresa Berganza, conducted by Giulini. “His is a fine voice of ample power and easy delivery, versatile in inflection and infectious in comedy,” observed one critic. Almost quarter of a century later he returned to the Royal Opera for several operas including the title role in Falstaff conducted by Colin Davis.
Somewhat past his prime, Panerai appeared in a semi-staged performance of Mozart’s Così fan tutte at the 2001 Edinburgh Festival conducted by Andras Schiff. “What can one say of Rolando Panerai as Don Alfonso,” wrote the Telegraph’s Michael Kennedy, “except that at nearly 80 years old he brought plenty of experience to the role and, these days, not much else?”
Early in his career Panerai had received an invitation from the Metropolitan Opera, New York, but it required him to be in the US for eight months. “I was recently married and decided not to stay away from Florence for more than a month at a time,” he recalled. He never did sing at the Met, although he was heard in San Francisco, Chicago and other US cities.
Panerai claimed never to play his own recordings. “You tend to listen to them a lot while you are working on them,” he said. “So, after they’re done, I don’t listen to them. I usually suffer if I listen to them again, and so I won’t.” Since 1972 he had occasionally directed opera, beginning with Donizetti’s Il campanello at Genoa and most recently returning there with Gianni Schicchi in April this year.
He had little interest in teaching and rarely gave masterclasses, although he was willing to meet young singers to discuss their vocal problems and share his long experience. The one question he did not like being asked, however, was to name his favourite composer. “It would be like asking a child who was best, their father or mother,” he said. “Anyone faced with this question would be embarrassed.”
Rolando Panerai, born October 17 1924, died October 22 2019