Paolo Silveri

Paolo Silveri was born in Ofena, in the Abruzzo, in December 1913 and studied with Riccardo Stracciari in Rome. He made his début at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma in 1939 as a bass — Schwarz in *Die Meistersinger* — and through the war years sang the bass repertoire at the Italian regional houses. He retrained as a baritone in 1944, made his baritone début that year at Rome as Germont in *La traviata*, and emerged in the immediate post-war period as one of the leading Italian Verdi baritones of his generation.

His central repertoire was the Verdi baritones — Germont, the title role in *Rigoletto*, Iago in *Otello*, Renato in *Un ballo in maschera*, Amonasro in *Aida*, the title role in *Simon Boccanegra*, and Macbeth — alongside the verismo and contemporary Italian roles. He sang regularly at La Scala, the San Carlo, Covent Garden (from 1946, in the post-war reopening season), the Metropolitan Opera (from 1950), the Vienna State Opera and the Glyndebourne Festival. He made an unusual third transition late in his career, taking on tenor roles for several years in the 1960s — Otello and Don José among them — before returning to the baritone repertoire. He taught at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome from the late 1970s onwards.

Silveri died in Rome in March 2001. Music Preserved’s archive includes a range of his Verdi and verismo work from the late 1940s and 1950s.