Nicola Zaccaria

Nicola Zaccaria was born in Athens in March 1923 and studied at the Athens Conservatory under Andreas Hadjiandreas. He made his début at the Athens Opera in 1949 as the High Priest of Baal in Verdi’s *Nabucco*, and through the early 1950s sang the standard Italian bass repertoire across the Greek and Italian regional houses before his appointment to La Scala in 1953.

He became one of the central Italian basses of the international operatic stage from the late 1950s to the early 1980s. His central repertoire was the great Italian bass roles — Sarastro, Padre Guardiano, Filippo II in *Don Carlo*, Oroveso in *Norma* (in which he partnered Maria Callas in several reference recordings), the title role in *Don Giovanni* (the Commendatore), Pimen in *Boris Godunov*, the King in *Aida*, and Banquo in *Macbeth*. He sang at La Scala almost annually from 1953 to 1974, at the Metropolitan Opera (from 1957), the Salzburg Festival under Karajan (where he was the Sarastro of choice through the 1960s), Covent Garden, the Vienna State Opera, the Glyndebourne Festival and the Teatro Colón. His recordings under Karajan, Serafin and Giulini remained widely circulating reference performances.

Zaccaria died in Spata, Greece, in February 2007. Music Preserved’s archive includes a range of his Italian bass work, particularly his Norma partnerships with Callas.