Opera Singer. A lyrico-spinto tenor, he shall be remembered for performing leading roles in many of Europe's principal venues. The child of a musical family, he was raised in Northern Italy, studied at Magenta, and at 19 made his professional bow in the baritone role of Enrico Ashton from Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor". His career failed to gain traction and he worked as a crane operator at the Port of Genoa before taking further training and making his 1963 debut as a tenor in Cincinnati as Turiddu from Pietro Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana". In 1965 he won top honors in New Voices and Verdi Voices competitions and that same year launched the major phase of his career with an engagement at Milan's Teatro Nuevo. Over the next decades he sang numerous staples of the tenor repertoire including such Verdi characters as the lecherous Duke in "Rigoletto", Ismaele of "Nabucco", Fenton from "Falstaff", Alfredo of "La Traviata", and Gabriele Adorno in "Simon Boccanegra". Garaventa also took a number of Puccini's leads, among them Rodolfo of "La Boheme", the faithless LT B.F. Pinkerton in "Madame Butterfly", Calaf from "Turandot", and the painter Mario Cavaradossi in "Tosca", and earned praise as Roberto in Donizetti's "Maria Sturada", as Faust in both Charles Gounod's work of that name as well as in Arrigo Boito's Mefistofele", as the title lead of Rossini's "Otello", as des Grieux in Jules Massenet's "Manon", as Matteo from Richard Strauss "Arabella", and in several lesser-known pieces. In 1966 he sang the Duke, Pinkerton, and Fenton with the San Francisco Opera, then over the years was heard at Naples' Teatro San Carlo, the Vienna State Opera, the Rome Opera, La Scala Milano, La Fenice, Venice, the Arena di Verona, the Washington National Opera, and elsewhere. A busy concert and recital artist, he often took the tenor parts of Verdi's "Manzoni Requiem" and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony; in later years he was a respected teacher, was a painter of some note who received showings at museums in Italy and elsewhere, and joined with his daughter Marina in running the International Festival of Music at Savignone. Maestro Garaventa died of cancer leaving a small but significant recorded legacy.