Word: tozzi
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Berlioz: Romeo and Juliet (Mezzo-Soprano Rosalind Elias, Tenor Cesare Va-letti, Bass Giorgio Tozzi; the Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Charles Munch; RCA Victor, 2 LPs). Berlioz' "symphony with chorus" is given a soaring, beautifully proportioned reading by Munch, and all three soloists contribute performances that are almost without flaw. As satisfactory a performance as the work is likely to find...
Nevertheless, most of the cutting was skillful, the quickened pace and the camera closeups generated their own kind of dramatic tension. Above all, the production had, in Tozzi, a magnificent Boris-one who was able to suggest in his handsomely haunted voice and maddened eyes the tragedy that Mussorgsky saw in the convulsions of "blind Mother Russia...
...Scoring a triumph in his first television opera-and in a role that he had infrequently sung before-was about par for Tozzi. He made his Met debut only six years ago; since then, he has thrown his big bronze voice into 27 different Met roles-including King Phillip in Don Carlo, Fiesco in Simon Boccanegra, Padre Guardiano in La Forza del Destino-and in the process has become one of the world's great bassos...
...Italian-born laborer, Tozzi, 37, was introduced to music at home on a phonograph stacked with Caruso and Tetrazzini records and with contemporary pop hits (one favorite: "It ain't no sin to take off your skin and dance around in your bones"). Although he took voice lessons, he majored in biology at Chicago's DePaul University. But jobs were scarce when Tozzi got out of the Army in 1945, and he took to singing wherever he could-in the WGN Theater of the Air chorus, with Skitch Henderson and his orchestra at a local nightclub, at local...
Even opera was better than that, and Tozzi went to Italy to study. With the help of his teacher, he changed from baritone to bass, a decision he never regretted, although in basso roles he rarely gets the rafter-ringing aria or the girl. He admits to some annoyance when a tenor or soprano "who has been singing lousily all evening gets up there and hits a high note and brings the house down." But on balance, he will stick with the kings, priests, inquisitors and assassins who fall to the basso's lot. Being the villain, he finds...