Happy Birthday Giuseppe Giacomini September 7, 2019 My dear friends and colleagues, Today is the 79 th Birthday of my friend and great tenor Giuseppe Giacomini. He is home in Monselice and I called him to wish him Happy Birthday and to sing to him Tanti Auguri with Natasha Novitskaia Adams whom he knows. I met Beppi at his Met debut (Forza) on Nov 27, 1976 and we became friends immediately. He knew no English and I knew very little Italian, but we started to spend time together including after his broadcast performance on New Years day he came to my home for the entire evening with his wife and 2 small children.My voice teacher Giovanni Consiglio took me to see this performance as he told me a wonderful new tenor was debuting; he went because he was close with Sherrill Milnes who was the baritone that night. This was 43 years ago and this relationship continued for the 3 of us as Sherrill was the Master of ceremonies that I appointed for the Giacomini Gala I presented in Carnegie (Zankel) Hall on April 4th 2017. As Beppi and I became very close, he appreciated my musical knowledge of voice and understanding and I suggested Bob Lombardo as his manager. When I became a manager a few years later, Beppi joined me along with Daniel Oren at the time. I traveled all over the world with Beppi helping choose the phenomenal roles that he became unique in like Forza, Radames, Canio, Dick Johnson, Calaf, Chenier, Tabarro, Otello. And when Beppi decided to remain in Europe for many of his engagements after 1995, he was seen less in the U.S. but he opened many things in Japan and China and Korea. We had some phenomenal casts that I put together in Tokyo like Aida with him and Millo and Semenchuk and conducted by Oren and then with that cast I put together performances of the Verdi Requiem. And this has remained and still is a great legacy. For me Beppi is one of the greatest dramatic tenors of the 20 th century. When you watch him sing you understand the meaning of real operatic singing and the “old school”. Today is his birthday so lets celebrate by bringing this to your attention now! With lots of true love and emotion, Matthew