Music: Morir!... Tremenda Cosa

The gesture was as familiar to Metropolitan Opera audiences as the gold curtain itself: arms flung wide, massive head tilted to the galleries, the barrel-chested man with the thin legs would stand at the conclusion of a great Verdi aria, waiting with a lordly air for the homage due the world's finest dramatic baritone.

Last week, at a performance of Verdi's La Forza del Destino, the first great ovation was reserved for Soprano Renata Tebaldi, making her first Met appearance of the season in the role of Leonora. But in the second act, Baritone Leonard Warren came on as Don Carlo and promptly mesmerized the great house in the famous duet with Tenor Richard Tucker as Don Alvaro. Later, dressed in the gold and black uniform of a Spanish grenadier, Warren soliloquized about his gravely wounded comrade-in-arms: "Morir! . . . Tremenda cosa!" ("To die! Tremendous thing!"). Finally he sang the great aria, "Urna fatale del mio destino" ("Fatal urn of my destiny"), giving it the flooding warmth of color and the vibrant depth of feeling that only he could command.

Then, holding in one hand a portrait of Leonora, he started downstage to make his exit with only a few moments left of Act II. When he was a few feet short of the wings, the picture fell from his hand, and Warren pitched forward on his face and lay still.

The Voice Stopped. Tenor Tucker, who had been standing in the wings joking with General Manager Rudolf Bing and Warren's wife Agatha, had just commented, "What a glorious voice!" when the voice stopped, and he turned to see Warren on the floor. He ran onstage as the curtain fell, crying "Lennie, Lennie, what is it? Get back to yourself!" While Baritone Osie Hawkins attempted mouth-to-mouth respiration, the Met's house physician sent for oxygen from the first-aid room.

Out front, Bing assured the audience that the performance would go on after intermission. Baritone Mario Sereni was called as a substitute, but when the audience filed back at the warning buzzer half an hour later, a spotlight hit the curtain, and Bing stepped out again. "This," he began slowly, "is one of the saddest nights . . . I ask you all to rise in memory of one of our greatest performers, who died as I am sure he would have wanted to die—in the middle of one of his greatest performances. I am sure you will agree that it would not be possible to continue with the performance." Many in the audience wept.

Crowding about the stage door later, they still seemed unable to believe that at 48, Baritone Leonard Warren was dead of a cerebral hemorrhage.

Up to High C. In his long career at the Met, Leonard Warren sang some 650 performances of 22 roles. He knew no German or French, nor did he sing Mozart in any language; he was largely limited to the big Italian works. But within that grateful range he created a whole gallery of careful portrayals infused with a passion and authority no baritone of his time could surpass.