Nicola Rossi-Lemeni

Born in Constantinople of Russian and Italian parents, Nicola Rossi Lemeni had an illustrious career singing dozens of major bass roles at La Scala and other operatic houses, including Chicago Lyric, Covent Garden, San Francisco, the Metropolitan, Teatro Colón, and others. The title characters of Don Giovanni (Mozart) and Boris Godunov (Mussorgsky) were among his favorites, and he performed and recorded with soprano Maria Callas and other great singers of the time. He and his wife, soprano Virginia Zeani, married in 1957 and often performed together. They moved to Bloomington, IN in 1980 to teach at the acclaimed Indiana University School of Music. It was there in Bloomington that Rossi Lemeni died of liver cancer in March 1991.