Word: gobbi
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Grand Pilastre, a 5,000-ft. perpendicular wall of gripless, smooth rock and slithery green ice that looms over empty space toward the summit. Last week the Grand Pilastre was finally conquered in a fantastic three-day climb by Italy's Walter Bonatti, 27, and Toni Gobbi, 43. Awed alpinists compared it to the first four-minute mile...
...along on his Grand Pilastre attempt, Bonatti picked Toni Gobbi, a wiry, middle-aging former lawyer who long ago chucked his law career to become a master ice climber. By evening of the first day they had reached a 10,725-ft. jump-off site, went to sleep directly below the enormous wall of Grand Pilastre. Recalled Bonatti: "It looked bad. Our legs shook a little...
...Exit. At dawn they were climbing, Bonatti leading Gobbi by rope. Up they crept through a narrow funnel in the rock face that led to a dome where there was no hold and no exit. Unable to move or risk driving a piton into the rock, Bonatti hung motionless for an hour, finally gambled on lunging to his right, amazingly lighted on a toehold and handhold. In twelve hours the climbers inched upward only 1,000 ft., camped at dark on a precarious ledge. Throats parched, they longed for the water they had left behind in order to travel light...
...angle. "Absolutely unclimbable," said Bonatti. But there was no going back. Leaning out into 2,000 ft. of air ("the worst fear I ever had to overcome"), Bonatti finally found a tiny fissure in the rock. He pounded in steel pitons, and from them he and Gobbi hung backward over nothing while easing out from under the rock to reach the sheer green ice face above. There, with Ice Expert Gobbi leading, they climbed 2,000 ft. more, camped the second night on another inches-wide ledge in a freezing wind...
...begun to dig for lesser known works. One of the happiest recent finds: Puccini's one-acter, II Tabarro, on an excellent RCA Victor LP. This somberly lyric tale of jealousy, betrayal and murder on a Seine River barge is sung with power and intensity by Baritone Tito Gobbi, Soprano Margaret Mas and Tenor Giacinto Prandelli, strongly backed by the Rome Opera's chorus and orchestra under Veteran Conductor Vincenzo Bellezza. As the betrayed husband, Gobbi magnificently defines-in a voice alternately liquid with longing and rough-edged with rage-the climate of mind that drives...