The Italian bass Giulio Neri (1909-1958) was born in Torrita di Siena and studied with Ferraresi in Florence for one year and then at the Rome Conservatorio for a further three. He made his début in Rossini’s Barbiere in 1928 but considered his real one was at the Teatro delle Quattro Fontane in Rome in 1935. Originally singing comprimario rôles, Neri soon graduated to major parts when he joined the Teatro Reale in Rome in 1938 as a leading bass, spending most of his career there until his death. Neri also sang in Venice, Florence, Barcelona,Buenos Aires and Munich. His single Covent Garden Norma and Ramfis in Aida. His large, dark bass voice was ideally suited to the Wagnerian parts he undertook but he was also highly regarded as Alvise (La Gioconda), the title-rôle of Boito’s Mefistofele (which he recorded), Don Basilio and, especially, the Grand Inquisitor. He died in April 1958 in Rome of a heart attack, just before he was to appear in that last rôle in the famous 1958 Visconti production at Covent Garden.