Giulio Rossi

An Italian bass who sang as a tenor until he was nineteen, when a fall into the Tiber brought on an illness that left his voice a basso profondo. He studied with Oreste Tomassoni in Rome, made his debut at Parma in 1887, and sang at La Scala from 1892. In 1893 he created Geronte in the revised Manon Lescaut at Novara. From 1908, when he made his debut as the King in Aida, until 1919 he was at the Metropolitan Opera, where he created Sid in La fanciulla del West and sang in the first American Boris Godunov.