Word: basse
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...nearly 40 extraordinary years, Basso Pinza had it. Blessed with a brawny, 6-ft.-1-in. frame, a handsome, dignified face and a flexible, powerful bass voice, he ranged through 82 operatic roles, singing and acting them in a style that had his admirers reaching far back into opera's Golden Age for comparisons. When he left the Metropolitan Opera at 55 in 1948 to appear with Mary Martin in South Pacific, Pinza slipped into the role of Broadway matinee idol with such ease that many postwar fans were scarcely aware that he had ever done anything else. After...
Like a Ballplayer. A true basso cantante (singing bass), he had enough flexibility to invade roles often sung by baritones without losing the power that enabled him to reach the back row without straining. And with his big voice he had the elusive personal magnetism and the dignity that grand opera demands. For a whole generation of operagoers, Pinza's Don Giovanni-in richly decorated doublet and single gold earring-was the virile embodiment of everything the role implied. Although Pinza could barely read music, he had a prodigious musical memory and a bone-deep sense of musical taste...
...spare arias, which are stripped to a few essential Greek-chorus phrases (in his first aria, the prefect sings over and over again: "Clean shirts, clean nightcaps, Latin mottoes over the beds"). Egk also allows the singers to sing their essential recitatives against the support merely of a sustained bass. The result is an opera that moves with beery gusto and at a breathless, never confused pace...
Toward the Double Bass. The new concerto is a close collaboration between Piatigorsky's Russian ebullience and Walton's polite English diligence. Composer Walton started his work two years ago on the Italian island of Ischia, but he and Piatigorsky, then touring the U.S. and Asia, kept in close touch. "I would cable him, IN BAR FOUR AFTER F. IS THAT A B OR B FLAT," says Piatigorsky. "and I would get an answer: B FLAT. SORRY. LOVE, WILLIE." The cabled exchange of suggestions and corrections went on even after the Boston premiere, and up to the Concerto...
...leprosy, and continue with a sort of Freudian secret society that tries to honor Dr. Blok by returning him to the womb (whether literally or symbolically, Author Piatigorsky does not say). But something goes wrong, and Dr. Blok winds up not in the planned destination but in a double-bass case. "I am a little bit Blok myself," says Piatigorsky...