Fernando De Lucia

1895 portrait of De Lucia from "Freund's Weekly" magazine

Fernando De Lucia (11 October 1860[1] or 1 September 1861 – 21 February 1925) was an Italian operatic tenor and singing teacher who enjoyed an internationally successful career.

De Lucia was admired in his lifetime as a striking exponent of verismo parts — particularly Canio in Leoncavallo's Pagliacci — and of certain roles written by Verdi and Puccini. Since then, however, he has acquired a great posthumous reputation among record collectors for something different. They hail him as the exemplar of a type of graceful, ornamental tenor singing which originated prior to verismo and that went out of fashion for a long time, only to reemerge in recent years. Especially valued are the recordings that De Lucia made of Almaviva's arias and duets from Rossini's bel canto comic opera Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville).

  1. ^ Arthur Eaglefield Hull (Ed.), A Dictionary of Modern Music and Musicians (Dent, London 1924)