Word: bassos
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With 1,687 performances in 75 different roles at the Met to think back on (his most famed role: Mephistopheles in Faust), zestful, white-haired Basso Rothier had no fears about his anniversary recital. He was somewhat excited: "All my friends will be there to hear me and I will feel so at home there. My voice is still very good, you know, but it can't compare with the golden voice I once...
...full of memories. Enrico Caruso still seemed to him a "semi-god." He also bowed to Basso Chaliapin : "What a stage personality! I would never undertake Boris [Godunov] after Chaliapin." To Rothier, singers are different today, although since his retirement from the Met in 1939 he has tried to teach newcomers the old ways. "Nowadays," says he, "there are very few great voices because everybody is in such a hurry to become a star. They win a contest by singing one aria - and they are stars before they are ready...
...four-even Soprano Alda-aped Basso Segurola by wearing monocles.When Segurola put on his top hat, he was showered with white dust: Caruso had thoughtfully poured flour into it. Baritone Scotti squirted seltzer water in Alda's face. Instead of nibbling at stage fare in the cafe scene of Act II, they sat down with relish to a chicken dinner-and more champagne -ordered in from an Italian restaurant...
...that few listeners were aware of. In the last act, with Mimi a-dying, Segurola (known mainly to a later generation as Deanna Durbin's teacher) suddenly turned to Caruso and whispered hoarsely that he could not manage his final aria, the "Coat Song." Grated the basso: "I've lost my voice...
This week, on CBS's We the People program, U.S. music-lovers were to hear for the first time how the great tenor sounded as a great basso. For, pleased with his prank, Caruso had made a recording a few weeks later. Only six prints had been run off and Caruso had ordered the master copy destroyed. Said he: "I don't want to spoil the bass business." But one of the prints had been preserved by Dr. Mario Marafioti, onetime Met physician and friend of Caruso, and Narrator Wally (Voices That Live) Butterworth had persuaded...