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Cesare Siepi
February 10, 1923 – July 5, 2010)
Siepi was born in Milan on Feb. 10, 1923. His father was an accountant; his household cherished music however was not musical. As an adolescent he sang publicly in a madrigal group. Initially he took programs to turn into a schoolteacher, although he had some coaching on the conservatory in Milan.
At 18, urged on by pals, he entered a voice competitors in Florence and received first prize. A supervisor within the viewers rapidly engaged him to sing the position of the employed murderer Sparafucile in Verdi’s “Rigoletto” for a manufacturing in Schio, close to Vicenza.
With the outbreak of warfare he moved to impartial Switzerland, returning to Italy when hostilities ended. He appeared in Verdi’s “Nabucco” at La Scala in Milan within the first postwar manufacturing on the reconstructed theater, which had been broken by bombs.
His Met debut in 1950, in Verdi’s “Don Carlo,” a brand new manufacturing that opened Rudolf Bing’s first season as basic supervisor, was last-minute, and it saved the day. Congress had simply handed an act that prohibited visas to anybody related to a totalitarian occasion. The Bulgarian bass Boris Christoff, scheduled to sing Philip, was denied a visa for causes the federal government wouldn’t specify. Mr. Siepi, an anti-Fascist who had fled Italy throughout World Struggle II to stay in Switzerland, flew to New York to take Christoff’s place.
“Even with a fast clearance, he missed the primary rehearsals,” Bing wrote in his 1972 memoir, “5,000 Nights on the Opera.” However “he did come,” Bing added, “and made an overwhelming debut and a well-deserved nice profession on the Metropolitan.”
In his prime, Siepi, a pure onstage, and he was a favourite on the Metropolitan Opera, the place he gave practically 500 performances, singing 17 roles throughout a 23-year affiliation.
After his first Don Giovanni on the Met in 1952, Siepi grew to become the Giovanni of alternative in homes world wide, bringing a sly mix of vocal refinement and animal magnetism to his portrayal. Critics and audiences embraced him for a variety of roles.
In 1955, at his peak, he made traditional Decca recordings of Mozart’s “Nozze di Figaro” with the conductor Erich Kleiber, and of “Don Giovanni” with the conductor Josef Krips, each conducting the Vienna Philharmonic.
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