Music: Best Since Chaliapin?

The program called the newcomer a basso, and he looked like a big one. But San Francisco operagoers, knowing that there are no great dramatic bassos around these days, sat back to listen in medium apathy. Next thing they knew, they were on the edge of their seats. Nicola Rossi-Lemeni was giving them Boris Godunov at the top of its style.

In the mad scene, he looked as though he might chew up every backdrop in California; with a rich, bellowing bass to match his histrionics, the effect was heroic. After the death scene, the bravos all but blew the house in. Even the critics sounded their A’s. The Chronicle’s Alfred Frankenstein: “Never before have I heard an audience gasp when an operatic hero fell dead; this is the final measure of the conviction with which Rossi played Boris.” Declared Critic Cecil Smith in the News: “The most commanding Boris since Chaliapin.”

Handsome young (30) Basso Rossi had appeared from nowhere, so far as most San Franciscans were concerned. But it was neither his U.S. debut nor his first U.S. critical rave. He was one of 25 unhappy European singers who were stranded in Chicago four seasons ago when their impresario went broke (TIME, Feb. 10, 1947). The Chicago Tribune’s captious Claudia Cassidy got him to sing a few bars of Lamentation of a Siberian Prisoner to her over the telephone. She compared him to Chaliapin and Pinza.

Son of an Italian army officer and a Russian mother, Rossi did not decide on a singing career until 1943. Up to that time, he meant to be a diplomat. But after a spell in the Italian army he became a partisan liaison man with the Allies, and began to roar out folk songs at soldier parties. He won so much local fame that the mayor of Verona asked him to sing a concert. Since then, Rossi has studied opera with the devotion of a monk. By last year, his big bass had filled every major opera house in Italy and several in Latin America. He now doubts that diplomats have so much fun.