Baritone Pasquale Amato as Napoleon in silent film Glorious Betsy - 1928

It was no accident that the great Neapolitan baritone Pasquale Amato was enlisted to play the role of Napoleon Bonaparte in this semi-historical film. He had created the role of Napoleon in Umberto Giordano’s opera Madame Sans-Gêne. While it is basically a silent film, Vitaphone talking sequences were recorded, but the sound disks seem now to be lost. Nevertheless Amato’s noble, natural bearing gives one a tantalizing hint of his stage persona. When Glorious Betsy premiered, it was preceded by a Vitaphone short of Beniamino Gigli and Marion Talley singing “Verranno a te“ from Lucia di Lammermoor. The film has been lost, but the audio survives: Interestingly Pasquale Amato’s only electrical recording and the only footage of him singing also a Vitaphone short whose film and sound disk have apparently survived but have never been restored and rejoined. But stay tuned... I’ll be working on that as part of a larger undertaking soon :)