Cesare Siepi

Cesare Siepi was born in Milan in February 1923 and studied with Chiesa, Achille Manzotti and Giovanni Brivio. He made his début at the Teatro Lirico Sociale in Schio in 1941 as Sparafucile in *Rigoletto*, at eighteen — but with the war years and the German occupation of northern Italy his career was effectively paused until 1945. He resumed at La Scala the same year and was a principal bass of the house through its post-war reopening.

He became the leading Italian bass of the international operatic stage from the late 1940s through the early 1970s. His central repertoire was the great bass roles of the Italian and Mozart traditions — Filippo II in *Don Carlo*, Padre Guardiano in *La forza del destino*, Don Giovanni (in which he was particularly identified, with reference recordings under both Furtwängler and Krips), Don Basilio in *Il barbiere di Siviglia*, Mefistofele in Gounod’s *Faust* and Boito’s opera, the title role in *Don Quichotte*, Boris Godunov, Sarastro, the Commendatore, and Fiesco in *Simon Boccanegra*. He sang at the Metropolitan Opera (from 1950 to 1974 — nearly 500 performances), Covent Garden, the Vienna State Opera, the Salzburg Festival under Furtwängler and Karajan, La Scala, and the Aix-en-Provence Festival.

Siepi retired from staged opera in the 1980s and died in Atlanta in July 2010. Music Preserved’s archive includes a substantial range of his Italian and Mozart bass work from the 1950s and 1960s.