BASSO PROFONDISSIMO : RECITAL BY CESARE SIEPI BRINGS GOLDEN-AGE VOCALISM TO UCLA

The tall, suave, silver-haired gentleman stands quietly at the piano. Although he hails from the flamboyant world of opera, he doesn’t fuss with a lot of theatrical gestures or gimmicks.

He probably doesn’t even know about the infamous recital prop a New York critic recently described as a small white tablecloth. That prop, after all, is reserved for super-duper-tenors.

Cesare Siepi doesn’t flirt with the audience. He doesn’t use the concert hall to sell opera excerpts. He doesn’t program lollipops.

He is a discerning, uncompromising artist. He sings with warmth and dignity. He sings with power and pathos. He values subtle distinctions of period and tone, invariably savors the text.

He sings, easily and tastefully, with a type of voice that has virtually become extinct. He is a true basso. The tone is dark, smooth, rich, even, mellow. The production is steady. The range seems bottomless.

Earlier in his long career, when he virtually defined Don Giovanni and Figaro for a lucky international generation of Mozarteans, he was generally regarded as a basso cantante . He was a bass, that is, with a solid top extension. Now, without question, he is a basso profondissimo.

Unlike tenors, sopranos and other virtuosos of the stratosphere, singers with low voices don’t seem to inspire mass hysteria. A shocking number of empty seats greeted Siepi at Royce Hall, UCLA, Sunday night. One wonders if Ezio Pinza, his obvious and most illustrious predecessor, could have attracted more of an audience.

Be that as it may, Siepi never was the sort of artist who made much of hype machines, and the local management didn’t exactly bang publicity drums on his behalf. The ad slogan invented by enlightened academia actually courted illiteracy.

This, we were promised, would be “a rare opportunity for lovers of operatic and concert bass!”

The UCLA program magazine managed to misspell Schuetz and, possibly more grievous, the name of one of the generous donors who made the recital possible. Under the circumstances, the lovers of operatic and concert bass--whoever and whatever that is--could be thankful for big favors.

Siepi’s discovery of the fountain of vocal youth may be the biggest favor of all. Next week, he will celebrate his 63rd birthday. Most singers of that age contemplate retirement or, at best, make concessions to accommodate sonic wear and tear, a decreasing scale and/or uncontrolled wobbles that result from stretched vocal cords.

Not Siepi.

The current state of his top voice may remain something of a mystery, for he favored low keys throughout the program. The state of his bottom voice is, as already noted, phenomenal. And one need not speak at all of wear, tear or wobbles. His is still a golden age.

His recital program illuminated a good deal of relative esoterica. The Italian basso paid remarkably idiomatic attention to Lieder of Schuetz, Schubert, Schumann and Brahms (a memory lapse momentarily marring “O wuesst’ ich doch den Weg zurueck”). He brought thoughtfully inflected Latin nobility to music of Monteverdi and Carissimi, romantic ardor to songs of Pizzetti, Respighi and Ghedini. Siepi’s unique skills as an actor, and as a French stylist, came to the fore in the “Don Quixote” songs Ibert wrote for Chaliapin.

Finally, in two Tchaikovsky settings of Tolstoy poems, Siepi demonstrated a keen command of the Russian sentiment as well as the uncredited English translations.

In response to an eminently deserved standing ovation, he offered an arietta surprise: “Quand’ero paggio” from Verdi’s “Falstaff.” Then, making the dubious claim that he had “little voice left,” he capped the evening with an eloquent aria from “Jerusalem,” the second--French--version of Verdi’s seldom-heard “I Lombardi.”

Hal Lanier offered reticent, sometimes dangerously lethargic, piano accompaniment.