Eduardo Ferrari-Fontana

Eduardo Ferrari-Fontana was my grandfather. in the beginning of the 20th century he was hailed as the greatest Vagnerian tenor of his day. He was a rock star before the first world war. He jet set on steamships before there were jets. When he was well into his 40's he took a teenager to be his wife and then had babies with her in 5 major cities throughout Europe, South America and Canada. According to my father...

     

He spent his money as quickly as he made it. He would throw crazy parties in which he would invite strangers whom he'd met on the street. He attended one of these parties wearing only his underwear in order to test the tolerance of those attending. He was eccentric, generous, scholarly, a real showman and extraordinarily talented. He died when my dad was the tender age of 9.

Since I've started using my hyphenated last name, I've been bumping into him a lot on the google image search pages, particularly the tattered yellow profile. I wondered what it must have looked like in it's day before these last one hundred years and the advent of low resolution scanners. What I thought for a moment, would be a quick spotting job, became a reconstructive illustration. I don't mind admitting that it took me the better part of a day to bring him back to a closer proximity of the image's original quality. please click on the image to see it in greater detail. To find out more about Eduardo and actually hear him perform please click HERE and HERE and HERE.