Evan Gorga

An Italian tenor who created Rodolfo in La bohème (1896), then left the stage to collect musical instruments on a vast scale. Born at Brocco, he studied singing with Aristide Franceschetti and made his debut at Cagliari in 1895 in Mignon. His Rodolfo at Turin under Toscanini ran to twenty-four performances, and he sang at La Fenice and the San Carlo before retiring in 1899. He amassed more than 150,000 objects, musical instruments above all, filling ten Roman flats. In debt, he ceded them to the state in 1949; the instruments are now in Rome's Museo nazionale degli strumenti musicali.