Word: bassos
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Typical of Peironi's girl singers is pretty, promising Soprano Dawn Nielson, 23, who sings three nights a week-all her music teacher will allow. This winter she got as far as the finals of the local Metropolitan Auditions. Pet of the Bocce is onetime La Scala Basso Antonio Meloni, who rooms across the street from the bar, has played pinochle there nearly every day since it opened in 1939. Basso Meloni, 81. arrives each morning at 10, stays all day, takes a short nap after dinner, brushes his shoulder-length white hair and returns for the evening...
...Rome Opera, scene of Soprano Callas' celebrated walkout due to "lowering of the voice" (TIME, Jan. 13), the boards again groaned under the strain of artistic temperament. During a rehearsal of Verdi's Don Carlos, famed Bulgarian Basso Boris Christoff and Italian Tenor Franco Corelli craftily maneuvered to gain the coveted stage-center spot. By the time Act II's libretto called for Corelli to draw his sword in defiance of Christoff (who played Philip II, Don Carlos' father), both singers were ready to fight. They drew, and Verdi was forgotten as the prop swords swished...
...Basso Siepi found his customarily resonant, mellow notes, plus a larger kind of rollicking, swaggering presence that had about it much of the animal authority Ezio Pinza used to exude in the role. What it lacked was only a tincture of malevolence: Siepi's acting was sometimes reminiscent of the reflex actions of a sleek cat rather than of a man willing to defy Heaven to enjoy earth. Soprano Steber presented a rich, blazing, gusty-voiced Donna Anna and Soprano Delia Casa an elegantly anguished Donna Elvira. And as Leporello, Basso Fernando Corena not only lurched and grimaced about...
...group ended with a captivating performance of Monteverdi's Vago Augelletto. The work requires besides a chorus six vocal soloists, two solo violins and basso continuo (here executed by 'cello, bassoon and harpsichord). This piece of shifting moods makes use of countless different combinations of the solo, choral and instrumental forces...
Like a Ballplayer. A true basso cantante (singing bass), he had enough flexibility to invade roles often sung by baritones without losing the power that enabled him to reach the back row without straining. And with his big voice he had the elusive personal magnetism and the dignity that grand opera demands. For a whole generation of operagoers, Pinza's Don Giovanni-in richly decorated doublet and single gold earring-was the virile embodiment of everything the role implied. Although Pinza could barely read music, he had a prodigious musical memory and a bone-deep sense of musical taste...