Lionello Cecil
Lionello Cecil was an Australian opera tenor born on 20 September 1893 in Waverley, Sydney. His birth name was Lionel Cecil Sherwood, and his father was a police sergeant. His first music teacher was Hector Fleming, and he gave his first public performance on 30 September 1912 at age 19. His second teacher, Andrew Black, urged him to study abroad, so he went to Italy in 1914. He won a scholarship to the Verdi Regio Conservatorio in Milan and studied with Mario Pieraccini. He made his opera debut in 1918 under the stage name Lionello Cecil, playing the Duca di Mantova in Verdi's Rigoletto in Modena. He became a leading tenor in Italian provincial opera houses. In London he married Argia Armanda Giustina Mattioni, a ballerina from Trieste. He sang many performances in Italy and also appeared in South America in 1926 and Europe in 1927. He took leading roles in the first complete microphone recordings of Verdi's La Traviata (Alfredo, 1928) and Puccini's Madama Butterfly (Pinkerton, 1929–30). He returned to Australia in 1932 to tour with the J.C. Williamson Opera Company, and later worked with ABC performing live opera. He also appeared in the film The Broken Melody and taught after 1942. His last performance was in July 1944 at the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music as Canio in Pagliacci. He died on 13 November 1957 in St. Leonards, Sydney.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 15:37 (CET).