Pasquale Brignoli by Sarony

PASQUALE BRIGNOLI
(b. Naples, Italy, 1824; d. New York City, 30 October 1884)
Italian-born American tenor.

His operatic debut was in Paris in Rossini's Mosè in Egitto but he needed training and so he entered the Paris Conservatoire. After a period of study, he appeared in L'elisir d'amore in the role of Nemorino at the Theatre des Italiens. He is also recorded as having sung at the Paris Opera in 1854
he came to the United States with Maurice Strakosch in 1855, and soon attained a popularity that lasted almost to the end of his life. His American debut was as Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor (1855) and soon thereafter he sang Manrico in the first American production of Il Trovatore (1855). Other permière American performances in which he appeared were La Traviata (1856), I vespri siciliani (1859) and Un ballo in maschera (1861), conducted by Brignoli's friend, Emanuele Muzio at the New York Academy of Music, as well as Luigi Arditi's La Spia (1855) and Betly (1861) at the Philadelphia Academy of Music. Brignoli's first appearance in Boston was in 1855, as Gennaro in Lucrezia Borgia.