Aureliano Pertile (1885-1952) was an Italian tenor, one of the great singers associated with La Scala in the first half of the twentieth century. He was especially admired by Arturo Toscanini.

Pertile’s repertory included Verdi, Puccini and other Italian dramatic and lyric roles. In the Pristine catalogue he appears in Verdi’s Il trovatore, a recording from the early electrical era of complete opera on disc.

His singing combined intensity, verbal urgency and a distinctive, emotionally charged tone. He was not a blandly beautiful tenor, but a dramatic communicator of unusual force.

Pertile remains one of the essential Italian tenors on record. His voice has the pressure of live theatre even when trapped in shellac grooves.