Didur, Adamo

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Didur, Adamo

Didur, Adamo, famous Polish bass; b. Wola Sekowa, near Sanok, Galicia, Dec. 24,1874; d. Katowice, Jan. 7, 1946. He studied with Wysocki in Lemberg and Emmerich in Milan, where he made his concert debut in 1894; later that year he made his opératic debut as Mephistopheles in Rio de Janeiro. He sang at the Warsaw opéra (1899–1903), Milan’s La Scala (1903–06), London’s Covent Garden (1905), and Buenos Aires’s Teatro Colon (1905–08). On Nov. 4, 1907, he made an auspicious N.Y. debut as Alvise at the Manhattan opéra. His Metropolitan opéra debut followed as Ramfis on Nov. 16,1908, and he remained on its roster as one of its leading artists until 1932. He then returned to Po-land. His appointment as director of the Warsaw opéra in 1939 was aborted by the outbreak of World War II. He later settled in Katowice as a voice teacher, founding an opéra company (1945) and becoming director of the Cons. His portrayals of Leporello and Boris Godunov were particularly memorable.

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire