Lucio Gallo Interview with Bruce Duffie . . . . . . . . .

Baritone Lucio Gallo

A Conversation with Bruce Duffie

Lucio Gallo (born July 9, 1959) was a student of Elio Battaglia. Gallo graduated from the Turin Conservatory and made his stage debut in 1984 .

He has performed in important theaters and concert halls, such as the Teatro alla Scala, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the San Francisco Opera, the Lyric of Chicago, the Covent Garden in London, the Liceu in Barcelona, the Staatsoper in Vienna, the Opera Bastille in Paris, the Staatsoper Unter Den Linden and the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, the Teatro Real in Madrid, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Salzburg Festival, the Bregenz Festival, the Teatro Regio in Turin, the Regio in Parma, the Comunale in Bologna, the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, the Arena in Verona, the Fenice in Venice, the Zurich Opera, the Musikverein in Vienna, the Royal Albert Hall in London and the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.

He has participated in productions conducted by conductors such as Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Riccardo Chailly, Colin Davis, Gianandrea Gavazzeni, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Bernard Haitink, Riccardo Muti, Antonio Pappano, Zubin Mehta, Wolfgang Sawallisch, and Jeffrey Tate.

His repertoire includes roles mainly by Rossini, Mozart, Verdi, Puccini and Wagner . Among the most performed operas are The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, The Barber of Seville, Journey to Reims, Don Carlo, Otello, Falstaff, Simon Boccanegra, Tosca, Il tabarro, Gianni Schicchi, La fanciulla del West, Andrea Chenier, and Parsifal.

== Biography is a slightly edited version of the Google translation from the Italian Wikipedia
== Names which are links in this box and below refer to my interviews elsewhere on my website. BD

In the fall of 1999, Lucio Gallo made his debut at Lyric Opera of Chicago as Ford in Falstaff. Also in the cast were Bryn Terfel, Kallen Esperian, Patricia Risley, Inva Mula, Bernadette Manca di Nissa, Brad Cresswell, Gwyn Hughes Jones, David Cangelosi, Raymond Aceto, and conductor Antonio Pappano. He would return two seasons later for Iago, with Ben Heppner, Renée Fleming/Esperian, Michelle Wrighte, Sir Andrew Davis conducting, and Sir Peter Hall directing, as well as participating in the pre-season concert at Millennium Park, with (among others) Susan Graham, Catherine Malfitano, and Timothy Nolen. One final production brought Scarpia in 2009-10, with Violetta Urmana, Marko Berti, and Stephen Lord conducting.

Between performances of that debut season, Gallo graciously took time to meet with me for an interview. His English was quite good, and while I have straightened out a few awkward portions, I have left several of his quaint but understandable turns of phrase. My thanks to Marina Vecci of Lyric Opera for translating when necessary.
gallo

As we were setting up to record, Gallo was relating one of his earlier situations . . . . .

Lucio Gallo:   I was for six years in the Carabinieri, the special police force, during the time I was at the conservatory.

Bruce Duffie:   [In a quiet voice] Notice that the interviewer takes a step back! [Much laughter] Now you’ve just come from a coaching session?

Gallo:   I coached a young man from the Opera Center, and I also worked with a pianist on Pelléas and Mélisande that I will do next January.

BD:   You will sing Golaud?

Gallo:   Golaud, yes. Ah, what a piece! This is a long year for me because I did Wozzeck just eleven months ago, and now I’m doing Golaud. I don’t know which is the harder role, Golaud or Wozzeck. Both of them are really hard.

BD:   Golaud is probably a little longer, but Wozzeck is more angular.

Gallo:   Yes, but Debussy is not bad.

BD:   These are newer operas. Do you like doing these operas rather than the bel canto?

Gallo:   Of course! I also did Il prigioniero [The prisoner], and Ulisse [Ulysses, both by Luigi Dallapiccola (1904-75)]. That was at the beginning of my career, and I was just the cover. It was very hard to study those. Il prigioniero that I did was with Zubin Mehta in the Maggio Musicale Florentino, and then in Salzburg. I will do it again with Antonio Pappano in Brussels in January (2000). We did Il prigioniero and the last movement of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony. [As in his previous one-act operas, Volo di notte and Il prigioniero, Dallapiccola’s declared theme in Ulisse was ‘the struggle of man against some force much stronger than he’.]

BD:   Do new composers know how to write for the voice?

Gallo:   Yes! [Laughs] Sometimes the new composers ask too much. When I did something by Salvatore Sciarrino [b. 1947], he asked me, as a baritone, to do some high Cs! [Laughs] I told him I’m a baritone, so what can we do? He said that we have to think of the Shamans, the chanting of the Indians. [Demonstrates in a falsetto voice]

BD: Like the countertenor, we will create a new vocal category, and you an be a counter-baritone!

Gallo:   [Laughs] It’s very nice with a new composer. The problem was the same with the other composers, and now I know that when something doesn’t work, you can do it an octave down, and it’s okay.

BD:   Does that give you more confidence when singing Verdi and bel canto?

Gallo:   Absolutely! We don’t know what really happened when Verdi was alive, but we all know very well many traditional things that the composer didn’t write! For instance, if you think of the ‘Prologue’ from Pagliacci, the high note near the end is not Leoncavallo. Probably, some baritone who had beautiful high notes interpolated it, and the composer said if you have those notes you can do it!

BD:   There are other examples, especially for the tenors. Do you interpolate all of these high notes, or do you leave them out and do what is written?

Gallo:   It depends on the conductor. If you work with Riccardo Muti, he sometimes likes to do what is written. Sometimes he says no, but sometimes it’s much better to do the high notes for the audience. Normally I do what is the tradition, even though I don’t like tradition. I remember what was written in a book of Maria Callas, that she said ‘tradition’ is just the last bad performance. [Both laugh] When we did Don Pasquale at La Scala, [with Nuccia Forile, Gregory Kunde, and Ferruccio Furlanetto, DVD shown above-left], he chose not to sing the high notes at the end of the aria and the duet. But that didn’t work for the audience, because the duet between Malatesta and Norina is wonderful, and everybody is waiting for those high notes at the end. It’s a bit boring if you do this piece, and the at the end you go down to the low notes. I remember it was not good for the audience.

BD:   Do we, the audience, ask too much of the singers?

Gallo:   It’s right that the musicians, and the artists, and the singers, and the composer educate the audience, but what can you do? For 100 years, all the performances are done in one way. You cannot cut something that everybody knows very well. If you do an aria that everybody knows, you can’t tell them it’s not right to sing those high notes. Maybe you have to prepare the audience before the performances with a press conference.

BD:   We have the surtitles, so maybe there should be a warning ‘high note not coming tonight’!

Gallo:   [Laughs] We did Alcina at the theater, and in the second part of the aria, my friend, tenor Rockwell Blake started singing the ornaments. He is wonderful when he does these variations, but this is terrible for the next generation of tenors, because everybody knows what Blake does, so it’s frustrating for young singers.

BD:   Shouldn’t they have to aim for that standard?

Gallo:   Yes, but it’s not right. It’s not written on the page.
gallo

BD:   [Gently protesting] But in Handel, it’s expected that the da capo was always to be full of ornaments.

Gallo:   I know! When I was in the Rossini Festival, I did hear that sometimes now they also ornament the recitatives. That is too much for me. One should do the recitative just as it’s written, then the first part of the aria, and then in the second part of the aria you can ornament. Otherwise, it’s too much. You need to hear what the melody is, and how it was actually written by the composer.

BD:   Show the audience what was written, and then show them how much you can do the second time?

Gallo:   Yes! [Much laughter] Absolutely!

* * * * *

BD:   You have a wide range of repertoire to choose from, including early works, new works, romantic works, German, French, Italian. How do you decide which roles you are going to spend your time learning and singing?

Gallo:   People know that I like to do modern and contemporary composers, and the theaters know that, so they try to invite me. If I realize that the piece is right for me, I can do it. I don’t like to think of my career as being just ten or twelve roles. That would be really boring! I know that many singers go for years with only ten or twelve roles. How can you do thirty-five years that way? If you have a wonderful voice, you have to offer to the audience other things.

BD:   [Gently pressing the point] You are willing to learn many roles, so when each is offered to you, how do you decide?

Gallo:   That’s your job. You’re paid a lot, so you have to work hard. You look at the role, and if it doesn’t work for you, you have to say no. I remember when a famous conductor offered me twelve years ago Il Trovatore. At that time I did only Mozart and Rossini, so I thanked him, but said no. It was too much for that moment.

BD:   Did you say yes later?

Gallo:   Yes. In two years’ time I will do Di Luna, and in another two years I will do Iago. I did Scarpia, and now is the time. I know so many singers, many friends and we all started together, but they are finished because they did not have the possibility to say no. My good friend Mirella Freni said she made her career by saying no more than by saying yes. Otherwise you lose your voice, and when you lose your voice, the conductors who loved you forget you, as do the theaters. So you have to think of your voice and your career. If you think only about the money in this job, it’s really dangerous because when you become forty or forty-five, you can be a rich man but without a voice. [Laughs] You then become crazy, and that’s terrible. Singing makes people crazy. I can see in the eyes of the young people who for ten or twelve years have studied singing. I am really disappointed with many teachers. They have a duty to say, “No, you are not talented enough to become a singer, so stop! You have to think about being a doctor or something, but not a singer.” I am really disappointed that those teachers don’t say that very often. We have so many wonderful singers. The United States is full of wonderful singers, but you must realize that if you have a good technique and a good voice, it’s not enough. You have to have the voice, but it’s not the first thing. The voice goes to the third or fourth place. You have to have the talent on the stage, the intelligence, and the musicality. There are so many things which are necessary for a career.

BD:   A singer has to be a complete person, not just a voice? [In the recording shown at right, notice who did the cover painting!]

Gallo:   Absolutely, especially now because there’s no time. I remember a book about Tito Gobbi which said that he prepared the part of Falstaff with Tullio Serafin for six months! Today that’s just not possible. For example, when I finish here, then I have to go to Torino for one week, then do Simon Boccanegra with Claudio Abbado for two weeks. Then I have to go to Spain for La Traviata. Then I have Il Prigioniero in Brussels, and at the same time we also have Pelléas and Mélisande in Bologna. It’s crazy I know, but it’s the system. It’s what you have to do. It is not possible to say no unless you cannot sing the role because it’s not suitable for you. Then you absolutely must say no.

BD:   Do you make sure that you schedule enough time off to study, and to rest, and to recuperate your voice?

Gallo:   Yes, that’s important. [Laughs] No, no, I know when it’s enough for me. If I think that, then I say no, I have to take a rest.

BD:   Do you go to your agent and tell him to keep some time clear?

Gallo:   They know what I need for each engagement. I need ten days or two weeks always! Sometimes one week, but no less than one week, unless you have to put something in the middle. It’s not enough, but it’s something.

* * * * *

BD:   You’re a baritone, so often you kill someone, and sometimes you get killed. Which is better?

Gallo:   Ah, none! [Both laugh] You know, sometimes if you think of Don Giovanni, it’s one of the best roles written for baritone. Giovanni is killed by the Commendatore, but it’s a beautiful death! I did Valentin [Faust], but there is nothing wonderful in that role. [Thinks a moment] I never thought about that before as to what is better. [Much laughter]

BD:   Do you like singing the roles that are imposed on you because you’re are a baritone? Would you rather be the lover and get the girl all the time?

Gallo:   As in Giovanni??? [Gales of laughter] No, no. You know what? I’m very happy that I am a baritone. The tenor is another world. People always wait for the high notes to be in the right place. For me, the best roles that I do on the stage are the ones which are full of facets. For example, I did a lot of Mozart, but I prefer the Count much more than Figaro. Figaro is a one-dimensional character, but not the Count. Figaro is very frustrating. Scarpia, Iago, and Rigoletto are the roles that I really like. I also did many performances of the Figaro from The Barber of Seville. [On the CD where Plácido Domingo sings Figaro (!), Gallo sings Bartolo.] It’s a nice role, and the Cavatina is wonderful for the voice and for what I feel on stage. I will do Falstaff in two years, but I know that the pleasure I get when I sing it doesn’t come within the title role. His aria L’Onore is okay, and it’s nice, but the monologue of Ford is wonderful. It’s a big example of declamation singing in Verdi. It’s a completion from this monologue of Iago. The Credo in Otello is always called ‘The Hymn to the Devil’. It is the preparation for the monologue of Ford because it’s the right declamation to be sung by Verdi. It’s the right sound.

BD:   [A bit concerned] Is Ford evil???

Gallo:   No, no, no, no! It is just that musically Ford is good preparation for the singer who is going on to sing Iago. I know that sounds strange because Iago was written before Ford, but for a singer, it’s just perfect. I’m very happy to do Ford, and then I come back here to Chicago to do Iago in two years. That’s wonderful.

BD:   Then why do you sing Falstaff? Why don’t you stay with Ford?

Gallo:   Because I like to change if you have been given the opportunity. Many people said that I am too thin for Falstaff, but you have the charm on the stage. That’s the problem for the set designer, for the make-up people, and for the costume designer. They have to make me look large!
gallo

BD:   [Patting my somewhat ample belly] Looking like me! [Both laugh]

Gallo:   That’s not enough, believe me. [More laughter]

BD:   Grazie! [Pauses a moment] When you walk out on stage, are you portraying a character, or do you become that character?

Gallo:   I think absolutely the character. You have to think the character, and sometimes you feel the audience is in the right mood, so you can develop the character more than other times. It’s strange! I cannot tell you why it happens, but sometimes it doesn’t work, so I do what I did in the previous times. But I don’t like to do each performance in the same way. Sometimes it happens if you have a good feeling with the other singers. I have done many things with Ruggero Raimondi, a wonderful artist and a wonderful man. We are great friends, and sometimes together we did something special on the stage. You establish a relationship, and it’s something that develops, and makes your feelings.

BD:   Does this develop in the rehearsals, too?

Gallo:   Sometimes! Sometimes you find something with the director, and he’s in the right mood for you, and you are in the right frame of mind for him. So you try something that maybe doesn’t happen then, but on one occasion it works on stage with the audience. I remember some beautiful rehearsals, and then we never did the same things on the stage in the performances.

BD:   Do you ever go too far?

Gallo:   Probably! [Laughter] It may be impossible, but what I don’t like is that you work too much in the rehearsals. If you have good singers, and a good director, and a good conductor, the best is to work hard for the two weeks. Then you have the possibility to put in your mind everything in this way, and it’s okay for the premiere. But with six weeks, or five weeks, there’s always much pressure. Sometimes there’s so much pressure at rehearsals in such a long sustained time, that people get to the performance a bit exhausted because of the process.

BD:   Does the ease come back for performance numbers three and four?

Gallo:   Exactly! For me, that’s the best. Everybody knows that. It would be best if the critics and the director of the theater should come on the third or fourth performance, because they are the best. The premiere sometimes works. We were really lucky here, because in the first two weeks the director worked very hard. Then it was just two or three hours a day. In Germany it’s six weeks and then premiere. I remember when I did Eugene Onegin in Berlin with the Intendant, Götz Friedrich, a wonderful director. But when we got to the premiere, we were really exhausted. I remember the Don Giovanni of Giorgio Strehler at La Scala. Thomas Allen sang Giovanni. We started at ten o’clock in the morning, and would finish at two or three o’clock in the middle of the night. [Sighs]

BD:   That’s too much!

Gallo:   Yes, too much, and I remember the premiere was terrible. Tom was without voice at the premiere. Sometimes the directors who also work in the straight theater are like that. They don’t realize that a singer is another thing. You have to think of the voice.

BD:   That’s right. In the straight theater, they can play every night.

Gallo:   Sure, but singing is another thing. You cannot sing more than two hours in a day, otherwise it’s really dangerous.

BD:   When you’re going to sign a contract, do you look to see who the director is, and maybe say no for that reason?

Gallo:   [Bursts out laughing] No!

* * * * *

BD:   We’re talking a bit about characters. Is there any character that you play that is perhaps a little too close to the real Lucio?

Gallo:   [Thinks a moment] No, I don’t think so. I don’t like to think about that, but sometimes you can realize it early, especially in the monologue of Ford. But it’s not the real Lucio. Every man who knows that his wife has the possibility to go with another man can be jealous, but I’m not a jealous-type like Ford, who can kill other people. I don’t like that interpretation. I’m appropriately jealous! Sometimes I can be a devil, like Scarpia, and sometimes I can be an angel, like... well, I don’t know which kind of baritone has the possibility of being an angel. [Laughter]

BD:   Perhaps Rodrigo [Don Carlos]?

Gallo:   Rodrigo? Yes, yes. My teacher, Elio Battaglia [see box below], is my best friend. I really think that I can do something special for him to say all my thanks, because he has done everything for me. When I started to study singing I didn’t like opera, so I did jazz for many years. I did the audition for him with “New York, New York”, so you can imagine what happened. [Laughs] He said that’s not good for opera, so we tried something else, and for the first two years I did only Lieder. This was because I didn’t like opera. I don’t know why.

Elio Battaglia (3 November 1933 – 23 August 2024) was an Italian baritone, singing teacher, author and lecturer in music. He was the founder and director of the course entitled, Il Lied Tedesco ("German Song"), which ran in Acquasparta, Italy, from 1973 to 2005, and then in Turin from 2007 to 2008.

Battaglia was born in Palermo, Italy, and was educated at the schools of Adami Corradetti and Erik Werba, before earning a diploma in singing from the Benedetto Marcello conservatoire in Venice. He then went on to study for a Doctorate in Lieder and Oratorio from University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna.

Battaglia is most renowned as a singing teacher of opera, oratorio and art song, and was the first Italian teacher to specialize in German Lieder. In 2004, he gave master classes at the Music Academy of the West in Montecito, California, hosted by Marilyn Horne. Across Europe, his master classes have been hosted by institutions including the Accademia Musicale Pescarese since 1984, and the Mozarteum since 1993. Between 1967 and 1997, he taught singing at the Conservatorio Statale di Musica Giuseppe Verdi in Turin. [In the photo at right, the portrait behind Gallo is Brahms.]

He gave advanced master classes and courses in universities and conservatoires internationally, including in the United States, the former USSR, China, Japan, Korea and Europe. In Italy he organized and held advanced vocal courses and seminars in Turin, (Teatro Regio, Conservatorio G.Verdi), Sienna (Accademia Chigiana), Parma (Festival Verdi), Rome (Università La Sapienza), Tolentino (Teatro Vaccaj), Napoli (Conservatorio S.Pietro a Majella), Catania (Istituto Bellini), and Milan (Conservatorio G.Verdi). He was often invited to sit on judging panels in international competitions such as the Hugo Wolf International Lied Competition in Vienna, Austria and Stuttgart, Germany, and was, in 2005, the jury chairman for the 2005 Renata Tebaldi Competition in San Marino.

As an author, he wrote many essays and articles regarding vocal art, and edited the new teachers' edition of The Practical Method of Italian Singing by Nicola Vaccai. He also edited an Anthology of the German Lieder.

Battaglia was often considered to be a world leader in singing teaching, and an expert regarding the works of Hugo Wolf. Italian music critic and author Massimo Mila (who writes for La Stampa and l'Unità) wrote of Maestro Battaglia: "...thanks to his passionate teaching style and large numbers of resident students, he has almost turned the Turin Conservatory into a branch office of the Vienna University of Music and Dramatic Art."

Battaglia's teaching was so influential that for the 1991–1992 opera season's opening night at Teatro Regio in Turin, conductor Maurizio Benini cast Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel entirely from Battaglia's studio of singers. No event like this had ever happened before in Italy.

In 1987, he was awarded the Hugo Wolf Medal from the International Hugo Wolf Society of Vienna for his artistic achievements.

[Note that Erik Battaglia, Elio's son, is the pianist on several of Gallo's recordings.]

BD: I’m glad you eventually came to opera.
gallo

Gallo:   Yes! [Much laughter] Then we started with the Count’s first aria from The Marriage of Figaro, and then Rodrigo’s aria. Now I like very much opera, especially because you have the possibility to be an actor on stage. I like that. I don’t like the opera in concert form. I like the Eighth Symphony of Mahler, or the Brahms German Requiem, or the Requiem of Fauré in concert, but not the opera. Also, I don’t like to do concerts with a pianist with the arias taken from opera. Many, many people are asking me to do it, so maybe the first part is Lieder, and the second part opera, but I don’t like opera with piano.

BD:   When you sing a song recital, is each song a little opera? [Vis-à-vis the video shown at right, see my interview with Deborah Voigt. The chorus master is Donald Palumbo.]

Gallo:   Sure, sure, little! If you think of Winterreise, it’s a big opera! [Both laugh]

BD:   Have you sung Winterreise in German?

Gallo:   Yes! I did a concert, and I’m so proud to say that I’m the first Italian that did a Liederabend in German at the Musikverein. I will go there again next year, and also in Brussels, and Stuttgart, and Hamburg.

BD:   Will you start doing more German roles?

Gallo:   Yes, but that’s really hard because people do not believe that you can sing in German. I did it in Italy, and probably will do it in Mexico City, but it’s hard to convince the Intendants in Germany that you can sing in German. I don’t know why, but it could be because they think Italians are just good for Italian repertoire. Anyway, I’m the first Italian that has done Wozzeck in German. Tito Gobbi did it, but in Italian.

BD:   Coming back to Mozart, let me ask if there is a secret to singing his music?

Gallo:   Yes, sure! Mozart needs a great cleanliness of sound. In Mozart there’s never this great excess of temperament or enthusiasm, as you would have in singing Puccini and Verdi. You have to sing each note as it is written, and go through from one note to the other note with portamento like many singers, especially Italian singers, do. It’s not right. You have to sing Mozart like you would sing Lieder. Absolutely! If you sang Verdi [sings Il Balen from Trovatore] with this kind of portamento, then it’s okay. But you cannot do it in the Count’s aria, because if you do it in the same way that you sing Verdi, that’s terrible. Mozart really needs the cleanliness of sound, and you have to sing exactly what is written.

BD:   Do you like singing Mozart?

Gallo:   Absolutely! I’ve done 155 performances of The Marriage of Figaro, both the Count and Figaro. [As shown below, he has also recorded both roles! Interestingly, he is given top billing on both CD covers.] I’ve also done so many performances of Don Giovanni and Così Fan Tutte [again, in each of those works he has sung two roles]. Now for the last two years I started with more Puccini and Verdi.

See my interviews with Karita Mattila, Marie McLaughlin, and Sylvia McNair

BD: Do you miss the Mozart?

Gallo: I will continue to do it! I will do The Marriage of Figaro again in Brussels in two years. No, I don’t feel that I will lose Mozart completely. That is also really dangerous for a voice. If you sang just Scarpia for the whole year, it could be dangerous. So you can alternate some Mozart with some Verdi and Puccini, and Berg and Dallapiccola. That’s good for the voice, and also for the brain. If you sing fifty performances in a year as Scarpia, you lose the possibility to make your mind brilliant.

* * * * *

BD:   You mentioned what you’re singing next year, and the year after, and three years ahead. Do you like being booked that far in advance?

Gallo:   Sometimes when I have a contract in 2003 [four years hence], I think that my life can go so quick, and I become older and older. But for a singer, it’s terrible if you are planning just one year ahead, because sometimes you would be afraid because maybe the people don’t like you anymore, and they don’t call. It’s strange. If you are a good singer, it doesn’t help when nothing is happening. You need to know that for the next two, three, or four years, you have a good plan. In case you cannot do it, you can cancel. People have to understand if you don’t feel good, but a singer has to know the plan for the next three years. It’s much better. It’s comfortable. [Both laugh]

BD:   You are more secure?

Gallo:   Yes. I don’t like to have nothing set up, because one day is always different from the day before. But when you think that the plan is okay for the next two or three years, you know that people like you. I will do Madam Butterfly in London in 2003 with Antonio Pappano. I know Tony likes me very much because he invited me for that time.

See my interviews with Elena Zilio, and Gwynne Howell

BD:   Are you at the point in your career that you want to be at this age?

Gallo:   I am very happy about that. Everything is at the right point. I am so happy that I have demonstrated my career very well. When I started, for the first ten years I just sang the right things for me, and now I know that I can sing so many more things. The big baritone roles will come. I don’t think I will sing everything, but what was in my dream is coming to fruition.

BD:   Good. One last question. Is singing fun?

Gallo:   For me, yes, it’s fantastic. I sing all the time. Under the shower is one of the best places where you can hear the voice. I was born in the south of Italy, and now I live in Torino. The south of Italy is warmer than Torino because it’s a little bit colder in Torino. I remember when I was a postman, and when I was at the bus stop, I was always asking if we were crazy. I need this job, but if I lose my voice, then I lose my life. I’m sure of that. But I don’t think that singing is my job. At the age of four, I started to sing. I remember when I opened the window in Taranto, I started singing “O Sole Mio”. I cannot live my life without singing.

BD:   You should have sung the title role of Amahl and the Night Visitors of Menotti!

Gallo:   [Laughs] Yes!

BD:   Thank you for coming to Chicago, and we hope you will return.

Gallo:   It will be a pleasure for me.

BD:   Mille grazie!

Gallo:   Grazie a lei! Mi piacere!

See my interviews with Lucia Valentini Terrani, Luciana Serra, and Samuel Ramey

This conversation was recorded in Chicago on October 21, 1999. Portions were broadcast on WNIB in 2001. This transcription was made in 2025, and posted on this website at that time. My thanks to British soprano Una Barry for her help in preparing this website presentation.

To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click here. To read my thoughts on editing these interviews for print, as well as a few other interesting observations, click here.

* * * * *

Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001. His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he continued his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.

You are invited to visit his website for more information about his work, including selected transcripts of other interviews, plus a full list of his guests. He would also like to call your attention to the photos and information about his grandfather, who was a pioneer in the automotive field more than a century ago. You may also send him E-Mail with comments, questions and suggestions.