Fernando de Lucia

Who was Fernando de Lucia?

Fernando De Lucia was an Italian opera tenor and singing teacher who enjoyed an international 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.