Order of Civil Merit, 3rd class, degree "Commander" with a document for the Italian opera singer A. Ferrauto, 1942

The original badge of the order is in excellent condition. Silver, gilding, enamel. With an original document issued in the name of the Italian opera singer Augusto Ferrauto. Very rare. Guarantee of authenticity. The Order of Civil Merit (bolg. The Order of Civil Merit) is a state award of the Principality, and in 1908 of the Kingdom of Bulgaria. The Order was established by Decree of Prince Ferdinand I on August 2, 1891 and was intended to reward civil servants who, through exemplary service or significant merits, acquired the right to gratitude of the Fatherland. The Order of Civil Merit was restored, with some changes, on June 13, 2003 and is currently the state award of the Republic of Bulgaria. The Order of Civil Merit had six main degrees and one special degree.

Augusto Ferrauto was born on June 20, 1903, Naples; died on June 14, 1986, also in Naples. His father was a Carabinieri officer, his mother had three more children from her first husband, who died. Augusto Ferrauto became an accountant, and after serving in the army he worked for the Federation of Neapolitan Farmers. In 1927, he married his childhood girlfriend Maria Riano. At the same time, he studied singing – without professional ambitions – with teachers Punzo, Lombardo and Campanino. Finally, his father and two famous singers, Esther Mazzoleni and Gemma Bellincioni, convinced him to pursue a career as a singer. His debut took place on August 21 or 22, 1929, at an open-air performance by Lucia di Lammermoor in Vasto Adriatico with Ada Sartori and Antonio Armentano as other leading performers, and in the same year he sang several more performances of Lucia in Naples (Bellini Theater), and possibly in Cremona. Then, surprisingly, he did not appear in public again until the autumn of 1933, when he sang "La Traviata" with Saturno Meletti in Salerno and again "Butterfly" with Tamaki Miura in Salerno, Foggia and Lecce. He sang at La Scala in Milan, at the Reale dell'Opera in Rome, at the Regio in Turin, at Massimo in Palermo, at Carlo Felice in Genoa, Ponchielli in Cremona, at the Castello Sforzesco in Milan (under the open sky), at Reggio in Parma, at the baths of Caracalla in Rome (under the open sky), in Bari, Piacenza, Reggio Emilia, Novara, Ferrara, Treviso, Fiume, Prato, Florence, Adriatic, Merano, Bolzano, Bologna, Montecatini, Messina, Cagliari, Sassari, Lecce... and, of course, many times in "his" San Carlo in Naples.

After 1949, he gave only a few performances, mostly in Pagliacci; confirmed performances took place in 1950, 1952, and the last Canio took place on August 19, 1959 in Naples, in a performance with Rosetta Noli and Ettore Bastianini. (Galliano Masini said goodbye in the same role and in the same series of performances!) Contemporaries (including newspaper critics) called him an exciting performer, as well as a good, if somewhat mediocre, theatrical actor.