Consuma's life and career are extremely ill-documented. There are more references to him as a
voice teacher in Genova (where I suppose he must have come from) than as a singer.
He was born in 1933 or 1934 and started singing in the late 1950s as a baritone – a fine baritone, and obviously
embarking on a quite promising career: pictures from that period show him with a very young Mirella Freni, with an equally young
Ruggero Raimondi, with Giuseppe Patanè, Renato Bruson or Ugo Benelli. However, instead of working on his rather weak low
register, Consuma decided to become a dramatic tenor at some point in the mid-1960s.
He would seem to have spent his tenor career at secondary theaters; among the scarce facts that I'm able to find about him are
a 1967 Trovatore at the Teatro Rendano in Cosenza, a 1971 Aida at the jewel-box Théâtre des Champs-Élysées
that was broadcast by the French radio, and a 1966 Chénier at La Monnaie, which puzzles me: there is a recording from that
performance, so there is little doubt it really took place, but in the online archives of La Monnaie, there is no mention at all
of Consuma; he must have stepped in at the last minute for Umberto Borsò, who
was the only Chénier scheduled at La Monnaie in 1966.
Consuma's career seems to have been closely intertwined with that of the Genoese soprano Luisa Maragliano; they may have been
childhood friends. Maragliano made the far better career of course, she sang a lot with Franco Corelli, she sang at La Scala,
she sang with Richard Tucker... but at smaller venues, she sang regularly with Enzo Consuma (like in that Brussels Chénier
or in that Champs-Élysées Aida).
After the death of Maragliano's husband, conductor Tristano Illersberg, she and Consuma married in 2000. Maragliano was by then
69, and Consuma just slightly younger, but that didn't prevent them from continuing their artistic activities into a positively
unusual age; not only did they join forces as voice teachers, they also sang a lot of concerts, particularly in Japan for
several years from 2002 onwards. In 2003, they even seem to have appeared in a staged Forza del destino in Japan, as documented
by a photo. And Ms. Maragliano still participated in an aria concert in Chiavari in May 2022, at the venerable age of almost 91.
Consuma was no longer alive at that time, but I don't know when exactly he died.
Reference and picture source 1: Youtube channel "artisticamente"; reference and picture source 2, reference 3, reference
4, reference 5: La Monnaie archives
