Research on Tamini's biography is still very incomplete, and most everything that you can find about him (in Kutsch &
Riemens and on the Forgotten opera singers blog) is
wrong.
Tamini must have made a great secret of his birth. Not even his own grandchildren know when he was born, as evidenced by a few
internet posts they made about him. They think he was born in 1886. Kutsch & Riemens think he was born in 1880. Either is wrong.
He was born Otto Hasselbaum in Mannheim on 9 February 1875. The "Italian mother" that Forgotten opera singers mentions is
an invention (perhaps his own, so as to make "Tamini" sound more genuine?). His mother was Anna Katharina Foltz, born 1841 in
Edenkoben (Rhineland-Palatinate). His father Ludwig Hasselbaum was from Offenbach, born 1834; so no Italian connection.
His grandson, on Facebook, tells that he was a bank clerk with a short temper; one day, he had a heated argument with a lady
customer. The lady was a voice teacher, and the quite surprising result of the quarrel was that Hasselbaum (future Tamini)
studied voice. Or that's at least what the family tradition says.
Anyway, he made his debut at the Vienna Volksoper in 1908, according to Kutsch & Riemens, and stayed there until
1910 (according to Kosch: Deutsches Theaterlexikon). Kutsch & Riemens further have him make his UK debut
in 1910 in London – so successfully that he returned to the UK several times. With a German troupe, Kutsch & Riemens say,
he toured the Netherlands
and sang, among others, in Amsterdam at the Rembrandt Theater. The Netherlands part is, as most always with Kutsch & Riemens,
correct; that was in 1911 (cf. Amersfoortsch Dagblad, 12 January 1911, for an ad that quoted rave reviews from three other Dutch
newspapers). The UK part, not entirely correct: he was there already in 1909. His earliest UK appearance that I could
trace is a concert with Thomas Beecham (not yet a Sir) and the Beecham Orchestra, and with the violinist Kathleen Parlow, on
January 25th, 1909 at Queen's Hall in London: a mixed program of orchestra and violin pieces, and four
arias contributed by Tamini: Durch die Wälder,
Ô paradis, Winterstürme wichen dem Wonnemond, and Di quella pira. In October 1909, Tamini went on a concert tour,
again with Beecham, his orchestra, and Kathleen Parlow. This time, Tamini sang two arias, invariably the same two in every
concert: Vesti la giubba and Mein lieber Schwan. Nine concerts in October: Cardiff, Bournemouth, Bedford, Cheltenham, St. Helens,
Harrogate, Dublin (where Tamini had to be replaced by John O'Sullivan),
Preston and Guildhall; plus two very similar concerts, with additional singers but without Beecham, in Manchester in October and
Glasgow in early November. Again in 1912, he was in London for a solo concert at Queen's Hall on May 14th.
Details on his activity in Germany (or Austria, cf. the Vienna Volksoper) still need to be researched, but sooner or later, he
moved to England permanently, and acquired British citizenship. That was no later than 1916 (he is in a list of British
naturalization certificates issued until 1916). He wasn't terribly successful in Germany, it would seem; the only German review
that I found of him is worth being quoted in its entirety (from Die Musik, season 1910/11, vol. 3, November 1910). Embedded in a
column of musical short news from Mannheim (his birthplace!), it reads:
In his solo concert, Otto Tamini proved that Caruso may have peace of mind in the face of his "most successful
rival", and doesn't need to dread such competition, which can only emanate from a tenor's imagination.
I think his definitive move to England may have been in 1914; at least, Kutsch & Riemens say they have no information on Tamini
after that year, so that's when he would seem to have disappeared from German sight. It may not have been exclusively a question
of musical success... in the German official journal Deutscher Reichsanzeiger und Preußischer Staatsanzeiger of 24
November 1920, the following "service by public notice" was published:
The firm of Sey & Hamm in Frankfurt am Main, Bahnhofplatz 8, represented by Dr. Otto Hecht, attorney at law in
Frankfurt am Main, brought an action against Otto Tamini, formerly of Berlin, now of unknown whereabouts, contending that the
defendant owed the claimed amount from a cash loan and that Frankfurt am Main had been expressly agreed as the place of
performance for the repayment of the loan, with the request that the defendant be ordered to pay chargeable 4003.30 Deutschmarks
plus 5 percent process costs. The plaintiff summons the defendant to appear before the 7th Civil Chamber of the Frankfurt am
Main Regional Court on January 25th, 1921, at 9:00 a.m., with the request that he be represented by a lawyer admitted to practice
before this court.
That means the complaint could not be delivered to Tamini because the court did not know where to find him; its publication in
the official journal served as a substituted service, and that way, the complaint became effective. There's little doubt that
Sey & Hamm, Otto Hecht and the judge must have waited in vain on January 25th, 1921: Otto Tamini had long left Germany, and was
already a British subject. However, I'm not even sure that he still lived in the UK in 1921...
He had, surprisingly for a former bank clerk, not exactly a knack for money. On April 23rd, 1918, the Edinburgh Gazette
republished a list of bankrupts from the London Gazette; among them:
Otto Tamini, 1 Upper Hamilton Terrace, in the county of London
There's a gap of ten years, no less, in Tamini's biography from that 1918 bankruptcy (posh address, by the way) to his 1928 (or
so) marriage with Danish citizen Methilde Laurine Johansen in New York. They had four children and lived in Wildwood, New Jersey
later on, where Otto Tamini died from heart failure in 1947 – that's what one of his granddaughters wrote to Robert
Johannesson of 78opera.com. She also said she was not sure whether he was active as a singer once in the US, but
that his profession was still given as "opera singer" when he sailed to New York at some point in the 1920s.
In fact, he was 53 years old in 1928, and for most tenors, that's about the age of retirement; but he had not entirely given up
singing: The Evening News (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) on September 30th, 1933 pompously announced:
Otto Tamini, dramatic tenor of the Royal Albert Hall and Queen's Hall, London, will be the guest soloist at the
Rally Day Services of the Sixth Street United Brethren Church on Sunday, October 1.
That's the last reference to him as a singer, as far as I can see.
Which leaves us with the question what he did from 1918 to 1928... If you look into the left column, and click on the fourth
picture, you'll see it's signed and dedicated by Tamini in Italian, and in 1924, so in the mysterious period. The "d" in "ed auguri"
proves elevated Italian language skills (it would read "e auguri" in more pedestrian Italian), so somewhere, somehow he must have
learned Italian. (Remember that the "Italian mother" assertion has been proven wrong.) On the other hand, he writes "Othello" the
English or German way (in Italian, it would be "Otello", of course). The autographed photo in and of itself is not from 1924;
it's the same that he signed (third picture) already in 1913 in London, so it's no proof that he still sang Otello
in 1924; just that he had learned Italian by then. (In his 1909 "Vesti la giubba" recording, his Italian is just
acceptable, but sounds overall more like Hasselbaum than like Tamini.)
Add to this the fact that his two US sons had Italian first names; one of them was called Arrigo (unremarkable), the other Benito,
which is highly remarkable for someone born in 1932 – an obvious reverence for Mussolini. Plus his granddaughter, in
her letter to Robert Johannesson, said he also used "Ottone" (Italian for Otto) as his first name. So... it's a wild
speculation, but could Tamini have lived in Fascist Italy between his UK and US residences?
I'm of course not sure, and I even have an alternative speculation to offer (nothing less wild than the first one). Methilde was
not Tamini's first wife; I don't know who that first wife was, but her picture is in the left column. The "colonialist" photo,
second from top: this is
Tamini's first family, started when he was still a bank clerk, because the son from that marriage was born in 1906 (two years
prior to Tamini's debut). And – that son, too, had an Italian first name, Carlo! Now with Tamini's stage name, those Italian
first names combine nicely: Arrigo Tamini, Benito Tamini. But in 1906, our future singer's name was still Hasselbaum. Carlo
Hasselbaum? Weird, and not half as nice as Carlo Tamini would have been. So... perhaps
the mysterious first wife was Italian, and that's why Otto Hasselbaum developed a weakness for Italy?
Reference for all "registry office" information
Reference for the concerts with Beecham and Parlow
Reference for the 1912 Queen's Hall concert
Reference for the John O'Sullivan episode: François Nouvion, Asile héréditaire. The life and career of John O'Sullivan, Bloomington 2012, p. 23