Toti dal Monte: A tribute

The soprano Toti Dal Monte was born Antonietta Meneghel in Mogliano Veneto in 1892. After study at the Benedetto Marcello Conservatory in Venice, she made her début at La Scala in 1916, in Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini. It was at this time that she adopted her stage name: ‘Toti’ from childhood, ‘Dal Monte’ from an aristocratic grandmother. Her career soon took off both nationally and internationally, as she toured as far afield as the USA, South America, China, Japan and Australia. Held in high regard by the world’s greatest conductors (not least Toscanini), Dal Monte appeared on stage into the late 1940s, in a large repertoire that embraced almost the entire Italian canon of her day. She died in 1975. In his passionately informed booklet essay, Giuseppe Pugliese measures Dal Monte’s singing and career against the judgements and classifications of the tenor and opera historian Giacomo Lauri-Volpi and others. He makes a detailed case for seeing Dal Monte’s as ‘a naturally lirico voice, shaped to the liricoleggero repertoire’. Reckoning her also as nonpareil among her generation, he cites another authority, Eugenio Gara: ‘[Toti Dal Monte] portrayed the moonlit visions and arcane enchantments of Bellini’s heroines, and the passions and sacrifices, woes and remembrances of those of Verdi and Donizetti, with flawless abandon.’