Francesco Graziani

Francesco Graziani was an Italian baritone, said to have had one of the finest baritone voices of the later nineteenth century, who excelled in Verdi. He made his debut in 1851 at Ascoli Piceno in Donizetti's Gemma di Vergy, sang at the Théâtre-Italien in Paris from 1853 to 1861, and was the first Luna there and in London, where he sang at Covent Garden regularly from 1855 to 1880. He created Don Carlo in La forza del destino at St Petersburg in 1862, and sang Posa in the first London Don Carlos and Amonasro in the first London Aida.