"Morir!... Tremenda Cosa"

The gesture was as familiar to Metropolitan Opera audiences as the gold curtain itself: arms flung wide, massive head tilted to the galleries, the barrel-chested man with the thin legs would stand at the conclusion of a great Verdi aria, waiting with a lordly air for the homage due the world's finest dramatic baritone.

Last week, at a performance of Verdi's La Forza del Destino, the first great ovation was reserved for Soprano Renata Tebaldi, making her first Met appearance of the season in the role of Leonora. But in the second act, Baritone Leonard Warren came on as Don Carlo and promptly mesmerized the great house in the famous duet with Tenor Richard Tucker as Don Alvaro. Later, dressed in the gold and black uniform of a Spanish grenadier, Warren soliloquized about his gravely wounded comrade-in-arms: "Morir! . . . Tremenda cosa!" ("To die! Tremendous thing!"). Finally he sang the great aria, "Urna fatale del mio destino" ("Fatal urn of my destiny"), giving it the flooding warmth of color and the vibrant depth of feeling that only he could command.

Then, holding in one hand a portrait of Leonora, he started downstage to make his exit with only a few moments left of Act II. When he was a few feet short of the wings, the picture fell from his hand, and Warren pitched forward on his face and lay still.

The Voice Stopped. Tenor Tucker, who had been standing in the wings joking with General Manager Rudolf Bing and Warren's wife Agatha, had just commented, "What a glorious voice!" when the voice stopped, and he turned to see Warren on the floor. He ran onstage as the curtain fell, crying "Lennie, Lennie, what is it? Get back to yourself!" While Baritone Osie Hawkins attempted mouth-to-mouth respiration, the Met's house physician sent for oxygen from the first-aid room.

Out front, Bing assured the audience that the performance would go on after intermission. Baritone Mario Sereni was called as a substitute, but when the audience filed back at the warning buzzer half an hour later, a spotlight hit the curtain, and Bing stepped out again. "This," he began slowly, "is one of the saddest nights . . . I ask you all to rise in memory of one of our greatest performers, who died as I am sure he would have wanted to die--in the middle of one of his greatest performances. I am sure you will agree that it would not be possible to continue with the performance." Many in the audience wept.

Crowding about the stage door later, they still seemed unable to believe that at 48, Baritone Leonard Warren was dead of a cerebral hemorrhage.

Up to High C. In his long career at the Met, Leonard Warren sang some 650 performances of 22 roles. He knew no German or French, nor did he sing Mozart in any language; he was largely limited to the big Italian works. But within that grateful range he created a whole gallery of careful portrayals infused with a passion and authority no baritone of his time could surpass.

A whole generation of operagoers saw in Warren's burly figure (5 ft. 11 in., 200 lbs.) and big, "burnished voice the natural embodiment of opera's great villains--the grandly tormented Macbeth, the insinuatingly oily hunchback Rigoletto, the ravening Count di Luna of Trovatore. But he was also wonderfully effective in roles that called for massive dignity and restraint--Germont in Traviata, the title role in Simon Boccanegra. What Warren lacked in natural acting ability he more than made up with his remarkable and splendidly controlled voice; it had impressive size, fine texture and immense range. Warren even commanded the top notes, including the high C that many a tenor lacks.

He started his musical career as a tenor back in the days when he was attending Evander Childs High School in The Bronx. Born. Leonard Warrenoff, son of the Russian-born owner of a fur shop, Warren dabbled in singing until he was 14, dropped the idea, returned to it as a baritone when he was 19, and started studying seriously. In the Depression years he worked in his father's shop, then landed a job in the chorus at the Radio City Music Hall.

Slow Study. On a bet, he tried out for the 1938 Metropolitan Auditions of the Air, armed with exactly five operatic arias. When he heard the Warren voice, Conductor Wilfred Pelletier, who was directing the auditions from a control room, thought somebody was playing a joke on him by slipping on a record of a famous baritone. Warren won, and he began his Met career in 1939 singing the minor role of Paolo Albiani in Simon Boccanegra.

His career developed haltingly. A slow study, he labored as much as seven months over each new role, engaging in a staggering amount of research. For Rigoletto, he read 16th century Italian history, studied Renaissance paintings, visited museums to make notes on costumes. Even so, after nearly 20 years, he confided to a friend that he felt he was only beginning to "get into" the part.

Warren's passion for accuracy was felt at the Met. He offered advice to conductors, directors, photographers, engineers and other singers. Several seasons ago, when he disagreed with the conductor's tempo during a Verdi opera, he grabbed the man by the throat and announced: "If you don't stick to the proper tempo, so help me I'll walk off the stage."

Triumphant Moment. In tribute to its great baritone, the Met last week opened a performance of The Flying Dutchman the day after his death with the prelude to Act IV of Traviata. Earlier in the week Warren himself had supplied an even more fitting tribute when he appeared in a new production of Simon Boccanegra, in which he had made his little-noticed debut 21 years ago. Last week's revival (the first in a decade) benefited from some magnificently colorful sets, the muscular conducting of Dimitri Mitropoulos and fine performances from most of the cast. But the opera was chiefly Warren's, and during the denunciation of the villainous Paolo in the famed Council Chamber scene, he sent his great mahogany-hued voice soaring over the orchestra with a power and blazing passion that made for a memorable experience.

His triumph in that moment was the best measure of what the Met--and all the world of opera--has lost by his death.

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