Case-I

Italian immigration had slowed to a trickle by 1865 with fewer than 25,000 coming to America. Alfredo Jannotta was one of those immigrants who was determined to start an opera voice studio, and so he set sail from Capua, Italy.  He arrived in Boston, Massachusetts, then moved to Cincinnati, Ohio and finally Chicago where Alfredo found great success.  He was a conductor and a composer and published the opera Alidor, first performed May 13, 1874, at Cincinnati’s Pike Opera House. 

A student of Giuseppe Saverio Raffaele Mercadante, Alfredo trained as a vocalist in verismo (realism) an Italianate style of the late 19th century.  Stella Skiff was one of his Chicago students in the 1890s and married him in July 1893.  She was a lyric soprano with ‘entrancing purity of tone’ as shown on her calling card and performance program “Second Popular Concert” from the 1890s.  She too, was a composer.  Skiff-Jannotta wrote the song “Pilgrim’s Progress” in 1944 after her husband’s death.

Italian Maestro Flourishes in America

Gifted by Mary Jannotta

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