Word: profundo
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...Basso Profundo. Save for Tenor Harry Theyard's dry-sounding, unathletic Pretender, the cast is just right. Mignon Dunn as Princess Marina is cunningly believable as an ambitious conspirator. Paul Plishka's Pimen is delivered with a basso profundo of enough tensile magnificence to signal a potential Boris. Right now, though, the role is the hot property of Finland's Martti Talvela, a huge (6 ft. 7 in., 260 Ibs.), nimble, running tackle of a man with an obsessed, Orson Wellesian face. At 39 he has a voice that may lack the steely edge of, say, Chaliapin...
...case anybody still had not guessed that the South Vietnamese were coming, helicopters loaded with airborne commando teams clattered noisily into points north of Chup, and American B-52s made basso-profundo bombing runs...
...Gill, who has a basso profundo voice well suited to the Italian comic opera, will sing the role of Basilio, the pudgy priest who is chaplain in the court of Count Almaviva. The plot of Barber is based on a play of Beaumarchais, and is related to the plot of Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro...
Whatever the opera's qualities, there could hardly be a better incarnation of Satan than Basso Norman Treigle, 42. Small, skinny, seemingly naked, Treigle flashed through the role like a black-voiced cobra. Plunging from profundo depths to baritonal heights, his voice remained huge and perfectly focused through one of the crudest bass roles ever written. "I can't say I really like this Mefisto," Treigle said afterward. "I think of myself as an actor, not a singer, and it isn't an interesting role. I just keep dashing out and gutting...
Hollering is making noise. Hollerin' involves a lot more than that. Jackson, now 76, and the community's reigning basso profundo, gave the final proof. Hitching up his overalls before a crowd of 5,000, he launched into a lusty, ear-piercing "whooo," then followed with a foghorn of a tune that sailed clear into the next county. That was genuine east North Carolina country hollerin'. As Dewey told the crowd, "I been hollerin' since my mammy slapped me on the bottom the day I was born...