Giuseppe Arrives

Rome's operagoers remember Giuseppe Di Stefano as the handsome young tenor who sang Manon one night when terrible-tempered Tenor Lauri-Volpi fitfully refused to go on. But even before that, Di Stefano had gotten ovations that reached the ears of U.S. booking agents.

Last week, Manhattan got its first chance to hear dashing, 26-year-old Di Stefano. New York's Italian opera fans, a demonstrative lot, were out in strength. As the Duke in Verdi's Rigoletto, Giuseppe's soaring tenor was always good, if not always golden; and he had a dramatic way of hanging on to his ringing top notes until the claque started. The claque's din was soon equaled by the audience's "bravos."

Next day Manhattan critics joined in the bravos, but more temperately: Giuseppe, they said, has the makeup of a great tenor--if he works at it. They hadn't clacked so over a new tenor since Ferruccio Tagliavini first sang at the Metropolitan last year.

How did Giuseppe feel about his reception? Said he, in the one word of American he learned from G.I.s during the war: "O.K." Born in Sicily, Giuseppe studied for the priesthood until he was 15 and found a girl. ("Until then I thought parents bought children in the market place, but when I found different--no seminary for me.") During the war, serving in the Italian army, he was captured by the Germans, but escaped in women's clothes he stole from the camp show equipment. He arrived in the U.S. with eleven trunks. Says Giuseppe: "I want to make much money, have big success and stay here a long time." How about Hollywood? Says Giuseppe grandly: "I am here."

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