Basso Buffo

Manhattan has seen many of them but last week it recognized the first good one in a long time. Nearly every classic Italian comic opera has a basso buffo, a comic bass. He wears a false nose, false belly, or both, and is not expected to have much of a voice. Fourteen years ago, when Arturo Toscanini conducted Milan's great La Scala opera, he asked one of his young bassos, Salvatore Baccaloni, to specialize in buffo roles, so that La Scala need not rely on rickety-voiced oldsters.

Chicago and San Francisco have known and appreciated Basso Baccaloni, but not until last month did he make his debut at Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera, singing a minor comic role in Mozart's Marriage of Figaro. Fortnight ago he took the centre of the stage, in the title role of Donizetti's Don Pasquale: a waddling, foolish old party, so much put upon that when he got slapped by a soprano minx he touched real pathos. Last week Baccaloni waddled again, this time as walrus-mustached Sergeant Sulpice in Donizetti's Daughter of the Regiment--and his reputation was made in Manhattan.

Looking a bit like John Bunny of the early films, acting with the gusto of W. C. Fields, and to everyone's surprise singing beautifully, Basso Baccaloni was rated by critics as the Met's best acquisition since Kirsten Flagstad. He is only 40, but needs no false belly. Just under six feet tall, he weighs a noble 320 Ib.--result of resigning himself to comedy and enjoying the cooking of his Bulgarian wife. Born in Rome, Salvatore Baccaloni sang as a boy in the Sistine Choir. When his voice changed, he resolved to become an architect, would have done so had not an old-time Metropolitan baritone persuaded him to take up singing again. Today Baccaloni knows all the major basso roles, specializes in the fat ones.

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