Word: bassos
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...said John Lewis in solemn basso. "We have to fight this war with human beings. Human beings are subject to all the ills to which the flesh is heir...
...research staff often spends hours checking the authenticity of a single detail. And the actual work of painting a TIME cover is so exacting that we need three top-flight artists to keep up with our requirements-Ernest Hamlin Baker, Boris Artzybasheff, and Boris Chaliapin (son of the Metropolitan basso). All these painters have such interesting stories that some week soon I will try to tell you about each of them...
Outside the opera house Basso Pinza looks like a prosperous retired bullfighter. He works over his roles as systematically as a strategist planning a campaign, ransacking Manhattan's libraries, boning up on history, costumes, manners. To make his Boris Godunoff fall dead with proper dignity, he practiced hurling his 191 lb. on to the Metropolitan's floor boards for hours, until he was so badly bruised he could hardly walk...
Seventh child of an Italian carpenter, Basso Pinza was born in Rome in 1892. His only youthful distinction was as a middling bicycle racer. The turning point came when he happened to sing O Sole Mio in the shower after taking second place in a local race. The man in the next shower told him he had a voice. Pinza was soon on his way to Bologna, where home-town folks chipped in to help him through the Rossini Conservatory. He scarcely had time for a jerkwater debut, when he was mustered into World...
...Isolde at the Teatro Reale dell' Opera in Rome. Soon his reputation was made. Arturo Toscanini gave him a contract at Milan's famed La Scala opera house. There the late impresario Giulio Gatti-Casazza signed him for the Metropolitan. Last year, despite the fact that Basso Pinza had his first citizenship papers, the FBI got irritated at some patriotic Italian speeches he had made, interned him, but released him eleven weeks later...