- Opera singer.
- Father of Tito Schipa Jr., born on 18 April 1946.
- Father: Luigi Schipa; Mother: Antonietta Vallone.
- Pictured on a EUR3.80 Monaco commemorative postage stamp issued 20 January 2020.
- On July 18, 1919, he was initiated to the Scottish Rite Freemasonry in the Lodge Espartana of Buenos Aires.
- Schipa made numerous recordings of arias and songs during his career, beginning in Italy in 1913. His recorded output included a famous 78-rpm set of Donizetti's Don Pasquale, made in 1932. This is still available on CD.
- In 1958, Schipa retired from the operatic stage to teach voice, initially in Budapest.
- He was a National Patron of Delta Omicron, an international professional music fraternity.
- Schipa sang his final performance at the Metropolitan Opera in 1941 before returning to Fascist Italy, "where he was a pet of the Benito Mussolini regime", an association he would never really live down; after returning to the United States, his first post war concert was poorly attended.
- From 1929 to 1949 he performed regularly in Italy, including at La Scala, Milan and the Rome Opera. He returned to Buenos Aires to sing in 1954. In 1957, he toured the Soviet Union.
- Schipa's stage repertoire, which in his early career had encompassed a wide range of Verdi and Puccini roles, eventually contracted to about 20 congenial Italian and French operatic roles, including Massenet's Werther, Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore and Cilea's L'arlesiana.
- Schipa's artistry is preserved on film. In 1929, he appeared in two Vitaphone movie shorts, singing "M'appari" from Flotow's opera Martha and "Una furtiva lagrima" from Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore.
- He was considered the greatest tenore di grazia and one of the most popular tenors of the century.
- In concert, Schipa performed a preferred array of lyrical operatic arias and songs, including Neapolitan and Spanish popular songs.
- In 1939, Tito Schipa declined an invitation from Italian-American groups to perform 12 concerts in order to raise money for the Anti-Fascist movement in Italy. Although he was offered $1,000 for each appearance, Schipa refused and is quoted in his letter, dated February 23, 1939, "I am sorry that I cannot sing for Loubet; but you MUST understand my situation; and my relationship with Achille Starace in Italy and all authorities there. And you know the purpose of the benefit for which Loubet asks me to sing for. Not tell anybody the reason; tell that I cannot come to New York or some other excuse; but don't ask me the impossible".
- Although a few contemporary critics considered Schipa's voice to be small in size, restricted in range and slightly husky in timbre, he was still extremely popular with the public.
- He studied in Milan and made his operatic debut at age 21 in 1910 at Vercelli. He subsequently appeared throughout Italy and in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
- In 1917, he created the role of Ruggiero in Puccini's La rondine.
- Schipa was born as Raffaele Attilio Amedeo Schipa on 27 December 1888, but his birthday was recorded as January 2, 1889 for military conscription purposes.
- Like his contemporary Richard Tauber, Tito Schipa was also a conductor.
- His son Tito Schipa Jr. is a composer, singer-songwriter, producer, writer and actor.
- He returned to New York for one last concert performance in 1962; Town Hall was full to overflowing.
- In 1919, Schipa traveled to the United States, joining the Chicago Opera Company. He remained with the Chicago company until 1932, whereupon he appeared at the New York Metropolitan Opera from 1932 to 1935, and again in 1941. He also sang at the San Francisco Opera, beginning in 1924.
- He also recorded several tangos, some of which were composed by him in Spanish, mostly in Buenos Aires and New York. Thanks to his early Latin American tours, Schipa was a very popular tenor in Latin America.
- Schipa died of complications from diabetes on December 16, 1965 at the age of 77 in Manhattan, New York City, while teaching there.
- His supernatural vocal gift was immediately noticed by his primary school teacher Giovanni Albani, then by all Lecce, which actually always considered him "propheta in patria".
- During World War II he lives a long and intense love story with the Italians actress Caterina Boratto. This brings him back to Italy, and unfortunately to a dangerous involvement with the Fascist regime, whose hierarc Achille Starace is an old friend and countryman. After the war the America of McCarthy rejects him roughly, and so does the Italy of Teatro alla Scala.
- By means of a brilliant and tireless character and of a quick adaptation to the American way of life, he becomes a full time headliner in artistic, social and glamour chronicles, many of great importance, many of big danger... He plans to write a jazz-opera (15 years before Gershwin). He explores the popular Spanish and Neapolitan repertoire with unmatched results for what concerns tenors (he works in team with first class authors like José Padilla or Richard Barthelemy); he becomes a star of the new born talking-pictures (Vivere! will be number 1 at the Italian box-office for 1937, as well as Bixio's songs in the soundtrack: Vivere e Torna piccina mia); he compromises with Al Capone risking to be killed; he collects honours and awards, including the french Legion d'Honneur (1932); he goes from a romance to another with devastating consequences for his marriage; and most of all he earns unbelievable amounts of money which he wastes and loses with the same obstinacy, being the favourite target of all kind of "stings".
- The arrival from Neaples (1902) of bishop Gennaro Trama, real talent scout of those times, offered the young talent - whose nickname is now "Titu" (tiny) - the chance to enter the local Seminary, where he will study singing and composition.
- In 1956 he's invited to direct a singing school in Budapest. This is his first experience over the "iron curtain", culminating in the presidence of the jury in the first Youth Festival of Moscow (1957). His new sympathy for the Russian public makes him a suspect for the Italian secret services. His telephone is tapped and his project of a singing school in Italy sponsored by the government is succesfully boycotted. This time around he's accused of filocomunism, he falls victim of serious financial problems and is involved in tricky operations by some of his managers.
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