I had a grant from the Metropolitan Opera National Council which could be used for voice study so I decided to contact Bardelli. By this time, I had already received a lot of acclaim as a young baritone. In addition, I was singing with Jerome Hines in his own opera company and learning a great deal by being around him, observing him, rehearsing, vocalizing, performing with him. He was really in many ways, my mentor. But he was not a Verdi baritone and I really wanted to coach my Verdi roles with somebody who was a great Verdi baritone. I mentioned Bardelli to Hines and he had nothing but praise and admiration for him. I heard Hines tell many people, "This guy Bardelli is just tremendous. He can sing high A flats for days!."
 

With those two recommendations, Masiello and Hines, off I went to the Ansonia Hotel to meet Cesare Bardelli. He was a tall, muscular, handsome man with a big smile and warm personality. We talked a little bit about Hines. Cesare had just sung Attila with Hines and Leyla Gencer in New Jersey and was very complimentary about Hines even though he had differences of opinion about vocal technique. As I would find out, Cesare Bardelli was a man of very strong convictions. He knew what he knew. Probably that is one of the reasons Masiello respected him so much. She also knew what she knew! And how! No one could terrify a young singer like Alberta Masiello!
 

Bardelli heard me sing the Prologo to I Pagliacci. He listened with a big smile all over his face without stopping me. When I sang the High A flat, he lit up even brighter and began to walk around the room.

"Giuseppe,” he said, "You sang the high A flat with so much color. It is better than mine."
 

My accompanist, Michael Fardink, and I quickly spoke up, "No Maestro. No. Yours is still better."
 

He smiled from ear and ear and went on with coaching phrasing. He said to me at the first lesson, “1 don't want to change anything about your voice. I just want to show you how to use it" And so began my lessons with Bardelli at the Ansonia.
 

At the time, I was close friends with Adolfo Mariani who ran the Asti Restaurant in New York. Adolfo had been a baritone of sorts, having studied with Madame Schuman-Heink, but he couldn't make it in career and started an opera restaurant to make money. He was friends with most of the great Italian opera singers since Caruso. I would sit and talk with him about the great singers of the past, especially baritones, and he would give me wisdom he had learned from Ruffo, Stracciari, and yes, Bardelli. He was good friends with Cesare and would tell me stories of Cesare's performances. Many evenings Adolfo would invite Cesare and myself down to the Asti for a meal, never at any charge. Shortly after I began studying with Cesare, I took him down to the Asti and as usual, at Adolfo's request, I sang an aria. But that evening I was tired. I sang Valentin's aria from Faust and sang in a way that I thought was just fine. But Cesare spoke to me after dinner and said,

“I won't judge you on how you sang tonight because you sang so well for me at my
apartment."
 

Bardelli was letting me know that he had a very high standard for how he expected me to sing. After that, I made sure that when I came to lessons I was rested and prepared. I never wanted to disappoint him again.
 

There were a lot of Bardelli stories going around from singer to singer. Most of them are inappropriate or unnecessary to relate. I heard about the five pet piranhas that Cesare brought back from South America and named them after his five greatest villainous roles I heard about the unfortunate way that he was dismissed from the Met because of the disagreement with Maestro Cleva. All those stories gave Cesare a lot of color, but they were not the Cesare I knew. I knew a very kind man who loved singing and truly wanted to impart to me what he knew.
 

The way I paid Cesare for voice lessons was from a grant from the Met. The checks would be sent to him directly from the Met. Shortly after I began studying with him, he told me one day, "When I saw the envelope from the Met I thought at first that they were writing to me to hire me back." It was a sweet and sad moment, because he had a smile on his face and seemed almost childlike, yet there was that sadness that he would never sing there again.
 

Cesare always liked my high notes. I had not only the baritone high G and A flat, but also the high A natural, Bflat , B natural and the high C. Cesare told me how he had taken a year off of career and tried to become a tenor but he just couldn't do it He said to me one day, "Giuseppe, if I have your high si bemolle (B flat) I would be the greatest tenor in the world." It was a compliment that I never forgot.
 

On another occasion he said to me, "I speak to you frankly now Giuseppe. If I have your voice, I would become a tenor, because you make more money!" Somehow I just knew that I couldn't make it as a tenor. I tried to sing a few tenor arias and even though I made it through it was just too much effort. Baritone would have to do.
 

When Cesare told us that he was leaving New York and going back to Italy, I decided to organize a 70th birthday party for him at the Asti restaurant Adolfo Mariani was all too happy to host it and would not charge anyone a penny. He was generous because he loved Bardelli and he loved great singing. Unfortunately I came down with the flu just before the evening of the party and I called Cesare to tell him that a party was all arranged for him and his friends but that I probably was going to be too sick to go. He didn't understand that it was all arranged as a gift to him. Finally, in order to get him to go, I got out of bed and went down to the Asti where I had promised to meet him. Cesare seemed stunned that this whole party for many people was a gift to him. Mariani asked him to sing and at 70 years old he sang the greatest "Nemico della patria" that anybody had ever heard. Mariani said, "I've heard him sing his whole career and he has never sung so good."

Then the party was over, and Cesare left out of our lives. In the next years many of us tried to find out about him, Mariani, Hines, Siepi, but no one seemed to be able to find out anything about him. Careers went ahead. Time passed. But I continued to remember Bardelli with thanks. What did he give me? Cesare was the sun and strength of Italy wrapped up in an operatic baritone. He gave me his culture, his past, his heritage, and probably without ever even knowing it. He gave me a real connection to the Golden Age of Singing, and he gave me tremendous respect. Over the years, if I ever questioned my ability as a singer, one sure sign was the respect that Bardelli gave me.
 

As a coach he gave me many things that I still use today in teaching. When I use certain hand gestures to tell the student to sing with "appoggio," I am doing what Cesare did to me. When I demonstrate legato, in large measure, I am demonstrating what Cesare taught me. So much singing today is what Cesare would consider "dishonest singing." The singer does not know "appoggio," does not know "legato," does not know tone. Instead he uses vocal tricks to get through an aria and calls it artistry. Cesare was such an honest singer. He believed in tone, legato, appoggio, and trusted the art of singing to deliver the words and the character. He would have been infuriated with most of the baritones at the Met today. He told me once, "Giuseppe, if people cannot sing, they must be told." That was his honesty. He was so honest that he could even admit when I, his student, sang what he thought was a better high A flat than his!
 

Zinka Milanov said that Cesare was the greatest "Barnaba" she had ever worked with. His voice was extraordinarily large. Larger by far than Merrill, or even Milnes. Yet he gave credit to others. He told me once how he sang "lago" with Del Monaco's Otello. He said Del Monaco sang in his ear on stage and "he couldn't hear for five minutes." He never mentioned that his own singing equaled Del Monaco's!
 

Some people in opera had an image of Cesare that was much different than mine, less charitable. But to me, Bardelli was truly a humble man in the most genuine sense of the word. I loved him dearly and I doubt very seriously if he ever really knew that.