Man of Many Parts

Midway in Jacques Offenbach's frothy operetta La Perichole, a trapdoor opens slowly onstage; from the depths of a subterranean dungeon emerges a doddering old prisoner. He has been digging through various walls for twelve years, and now he is ready to escape. He lasts no more than four minutes onstage before he is forced to flee through the trap again. But to Offenbach fans at Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera, the sequence is one of the comic highpoints of the evening. The man responsible: Italian-born Tenor Alessio de Paolis (pronounced: Pow-o-lees), 64, who in a quarter-century at the Met has sung some 50 secondary roles and emerged as the finest character actor in opera.

In most of his roles, De Paolis has only a few minutes to establish a character. But he does so with such skill (and without exaggerated theatrics) that even famous tenors and sopranos find themselves in danger of being upstaged in his presence. De Paolis seems able to play any role at all--Goro, the wizened Japanese matchmaker of Butterfly; Shuiski, the crafty adviser to the Czar in Boris Godunov; Spoletta, the evil police agent of Tosca; Don Basilio, the fatuous music master of Figaro. His palsied Emperor in Turandot is one of his most recent and brilliant successes. In Tales of Hoffmann he has four roles (Andres, Cochenille, Pitichinaccio and Frantz) and four rapid-fire makeup changes. This week in Boston, where he is visiting with the Met, De Paolis is scheduled to appear not only as Goro and Spoletta but as Alaindoro, the skirt-chasing old roue of Boheme.

The old actor has little voice left. Long ago it developed a natural quaver that he has adroitly learned to use for theatri cal effect. But he more than makes up for his vocal defects by embellishing each role with small dramatic touches of his own--a twitch here, a little shuffle of surprise there--that bring character to life. Son of a well-to-do Roman family, De Paolis made his debut as the Duke in Rigoletto at Bologna in 1919, later sang tenor leads at virtually every major house in Europe. But, he says, "I never had a large voice; I knew that I could go on being a tenor of the second rank forever --but suppose I could become the best character actor in the world?" He made the switch in 1932.

"Nowadays," he says in his fractured English, "you hear a man who sing, a woman who sing, but they make nothing in the part. When I sing Goro, I stop being De Paolis from moment I step into the opera house."

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