Teatro Colón: The First Voices of Buenos Aires's Opera House on Record

Teatro Colon

A tango collector's CD brings together the voices that filled the Teatro Colón in its first years, from Titta Ruffo and Enrico Caruso to Lucrezia Bori singing a tango.

At a glance

  • The present building opened on 25 May 1908 with Verdi's Aida
  • The CD gathers 24 recordings (1904–1934) by 22 singers who made their Colón debuts between 1908 and 1919
  • Tango meets opera: the soprano Lucrezia Bori recorded Patotero sentimental for Victor in 1925

Fuente original: «Los primeros cantantes del Teatro Colón de Buenos Aires - Vol. 1» (Los primeros cantantes del Teatro Colón, vol. 1 (presentación del disco)) · Resumen en español ↓

The Teatro Colón is Buenos Aires’s great opera house, and for many visiting tango dancers it is on the list of places to see between milongas. The old Club de Tango website, run by people who collected tango records, once presented a CD that looks at the Colón from a tango lover’s angle: Los primeros cantantes del Teatro Colón de Buenos Aires, volume 1, “The first singers of the Teatro Colón”. Its compiler admitted that he was no expert in opera but, as a tanguero, a great admirer of an art “in which the performers deliver the spoken word by singing” (our translation). This page describes the disc and adds what independent sources say about the theatre’s first years.

Giuseppe Anselmi – Che gelida manina · Uploaded to YouTube by “Dead Tenors' Society”, not an official release. The player loads from YouTube only after you click.

An opera house opened on a national holiday

The compiler recalls that the present Colón opened on the evening of 25 May 1908, Argentina’s national day, with Verdi’s Aida. The city of Buenos Aires gives the same date and opera on its official tourism site and names the architects: Francesco Tamburini, Vittorio Meano and Jules Dormal.

The opening night was less glorious than the building. In a 1997 article for La Nación, Paula Urien explained that the theatre had planned to open with Otello or Hamlet, but the singers Antonio Paoli and Titta Ruffo turned the leading roles down, out of the old superstition that opening a theatre brings bad luck. Aida was put on at the last minute with what she calls a second-rate cast. Ruffo did sing at the Colón that same year: the CD lists 1908 as his debut.

Twenty-four voices from discs and cylinders

The CD holds 24 tracks, recorded between 1904 and 1934, by 22 singers. For each one the booklet gives the year of the first appearance at the Colón, from 1908 (the tenor Amadeo Bassi and the baritone Titta Ruffo) to 1919 (the soprano Maria Labia). According to the presentation, the recordings were transferred using the original machines, discs and cylinders, and the booklet includes photographs of all the singers.

Most of the programme is classic opera: Giuseppe Anselmi in Donizetti’s Don Pasquale (1907), María Barrientos in two arias from Bellini’s La sonnambula (1906), Tito Schipa in Gounod’s Faust (1913), the mezzo-soprano Fanny Anitúa in “Stride la vampa” from Il trovatore (1910), Eugenia Burzio in Un ballo in maschera (1906) and Rosina Storchio, again in La sonnambula (1906). Two tracks are Edison cylinders from 1912, by Maria Labia and Adelina Agostinelli. Some singers remain obscure: for the mezzo-soprano Elena Lucci and the tenor Alexander Rosanoff, both Colón debutants of 1909, the booklet could give no dates of birth or death.

Caruso in Buenos Aires

The most famous name on the disc is Enrico Caruso, who according to the booklet first sang at the Colón in 1915. He is represented by the song “Scordame” by Salvatore Fucito, in a 1919 Victrola recording. A 2026 article by Marcos Calligaris for Cadena 3 describes what followed his Colón season that year: a series of four performances at the Teatro Rivera Indarte in Córdoba, opening with Manon Lescaut on 10 July 1915; Caruso sang in two of them.

Argentine music in Italian voices

What makes the CD interesting for tango listeners are the tracks where the Colón’s international stars sing Argentine music:

The disc ends with a curiosity: Tito Schipa singing the anonymous L’inno degli sfessati, a private Victor recording made in Buenos Aires in 1934.

Tango and the Colón

The compiler’s point is simple: for a porteño, the Colón and the tango belong to the same city. Musicians also moved between both worlds. The violinist Manuel Posadas, brother of the tango composer Carlos Posadas, was first violin at the Colón, according to Ricardo Ostuni’s essay in Revista Club de Tango. The Colón is one of the tango places of Buenos Aires that this site covers, and this CD is a reminder that some of its first opera stars also recorded tangos and Argentine songs.

Sources