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Paul Plishka, an American singer acclaimed for his sonorous, liquid bass tones and near-perfect diction during a career at the Metropolitan Opera that spanned a half-century, died on Monday in Wilmington, N.C. He was 83.<\/p>\n
His death was confirmed by his wife, Sharon Thomas, who did not cite a cause or specify where in Wilmington he died.<\/p>\n
Known for a disciplined approach to choosing roles and a great concern for the development of his voice, Mr. Plishka was one of the most prolific solo singers at the Met, where he appeared in 88 roles over 1,672 performances.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the secret of my longevity was having the good sense to turn down repertoire that wasn\u2019t right for my voice at the time,\u201d he said in an interview for this obituary in 2023.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Early in his career he preferred buffo, or comic, roles, especially in operas by Verdi. \u201cMy voice was more of the basso cantante \u2014 with a lyric kind of sound \u2014 not a villain\u2019s voice,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But as his voice changed, Mr. Plishka accepted more dramatic roles, including the title one in Mussorgsky\u2019s \u201cBoris Godunov,\u201d<\/a> as Philip II of Spain in Verdi\u2019s \u201cDon Carlos\u201d<\/a> and as Mephistopheles in Gounod\u2019s \u201cFaust\u201d<\/a> \u2014 all stellar performances.<\/p>\n Late in his career he again embraced buffo roles, drawing acclaim especially for his rendition of the aging cavalier in Verdi\u2019s \u201cFalstaff.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cTo me, it put everything together \u2014 beautiful singing, acting and a character I was so attached to that I missed him between performances,\u201d Mr. Plishka recalled.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Some singers approach a new role by first trying to probe that character \u2014 but not Mr. Plishka. \u201cI always went for the vocals, because I wanted to be secure with each and every note I had to sing,\u201d he said in the 2023 interview. \u201cIf you go to character first, you end doing ugly things to your throat.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Among his few regrets was not getting enough opportunities to play one of his favorite characters, the title role in Mozart\u2019s \u201cThe Marriage of Figaro.\u201d<\/a> He also lamented never being offered the title role in Mozart\u2019s \u201cDon Giovanni\u201d<\/a> \u2014 a slight he attributed to his stout physique.<\/p>\n \u201cThroughout most of my career, I weighed between 240 and 300 pounds,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t think there are many Don Giovannis out there who look like that.\u201d<\/p>\n When Mr. Plishka retired at 71, his voice was still robust and able to hit high notes as well as the low ones expected from a bass. \u201cMy hearing became a problem and was the main reason I stopped singing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Paul Plishka was born on Aug. 28, 1941, in Old Forge, a former coal-mining community in northeastern Pennsylvania, where his grandparents, immigrants from Ukraine, worked in the mines and factories. His father, Peter, was a stockroom employee. His mother, Helen (Patrician) Plishka, was a seamstress in a dress factory. He had a younger brother, Peter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The family moved to Paterson, N.J., where Paul starred in the high school chorus. After singing the role of Jud Fry in \u201cOklahoma!\u201d he was invited to join the Paterson Lyric Opera Theater. Its founder and director, Armen Boyajian, became Mr. Plishka\u2019s voice teacher throughout his career.<\/p>\n Mr. Plishka studied as a voice major at nearby Montclair State University, where he met Judith Ann Colgan. They married and had three sons.<\/p>\n Ms. Plishka and Mr. Boyajian both advised Mr. Plishka on his performances. \u201cThey were the two people who knew my voice even better than I did,\u201d he said. \u201cJudith was a passionate opera lover and attended almost all my performances.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Plishka dropped out of college after two years and drove a truck for an ice cream company while continuing to sing with the Paterson company.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n At 23, he auditioned for the Metropolitan Opera and toured with its national company. When the company folded three years later, he was invited to join the Met in New York.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He auditioned in front of Rudolf Bing<\/a>, the longtime autocratic manager of the Met, who offered him buffo roles. But Mr. Plishka agreed to accept the work only if he were allowed to do occasional dramatic roles as well. \u201cI don\u2019t know how I found the courage to insist,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He made his Met debut in 1967, as the Monk in Ponchielli\u2019s \u201cLa Gioconda.\u201d<\/a> Over the next three years he performed some 30 other roles, mainly buffo ones, including the lawyerly doctor Bartolo in \u201cThe Marriage of Figaro\u201d and the bumbling friar Melitone in Verdi\u2019s \u201cLa Forza del Destino.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n But by 1970 the Met had decided that his voice had become more suitable for dramatic roles. He was soon asked to portray major characters, like Philip in \u201cDon Carlos\u201d and the chaplain and tutor Raimondo in Donizetti\u2019s \u201cLucia di Lammermoor.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Out of concern for his voice, Mr. Plishka for many years declined to sing roles like Boris Godunov, the delusional czar, or Scarpia, the villainous chief of police, in Puccini\u2019s \u201cTosca.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cBoth those characters have a great deal of tension and violence in their voice,\u201d he explained, \u201cand when you are a young singer, you cannot control those emotions and end up screaming and hurting your voice.\u201d He never sang Scarpia, but he finally debuted as Boris Godunov at the Met in 1974.<\/p>\n Mr. Plishka had no qualms about accepting \u201cgraybeard\u201d parts \u2014 like Raimondo in \u201cLucia di Lammermoor,\u201d King Marke in Wagner\u2019s \u201cTristan und Isolde\u201d<\/a> and the traveling patent-medicine peddler Dulcamara in Donizetti\u2019s \u201cL\u2019Elisir d\u2019Amore\u201d<\/a> \u2014 that other singers might reject out of fear of being typecast in secondary roles. \u201cMany basses just want to sing the title roles \u2014 Figaro, Don Giovanni, Boris,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Plishka himself thrived on a steady mix of secondary and lead roles. Even early in his career at the Met, he was singled out for his distinctive performance as the devil in Gounod\u2019s \u201cFaust.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMr. Plishka\u2019s Mephistopheles was a harsher, more plainly malevolent character than is usually seen,\u201d the critic Donal Henahan of The New York Times wrote in one review, in 1976, \u201cand provided a few chills with his realistic outbursts of frustrated rage.\u201d<\/p>\n Looking back on his long years at the Met, Mr. Plishka rated Falstaff, which he began performing in 1992, as his favorite and best rendered role.<\/p>\n Critics agreed. \u201cMr. Plishka gave the role an almost touchingly human quality,\u201d Edward Rothstein wrote in The Times in reviewing a 1992 performance at the Met. \u201cHe was a Falstaff almost enticingly full of himself.\u201d<\/p>\n Offstage, Mr. Plishka endured considerable grief. In 1984, his younger brother, Dr. Peter Plishka, chief of children\u2019s services at the state-run Children\u2019s Psychiatric Center in New York, was found dead from a self-inflicted knife wound in his Bronx apartment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Plishka\u2019s wife, Judith, died in 2004. He subsequently married Ms. Thomas, a former resident stage director at the Met. Mr. Plishka\u2019s three sons, Paul Jr., Nicolai and Jeffrey, also died. (In 1991, Jeffrey was accused<\/a> of the rape and murder of Laura Ronning, a young camp counselor in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, but he was acquitted of the crimes in 2010.)<\/p>\n In addition to his wife, Mr. Plishka is survived by his daughter-in-law, Fatima Plishka, and a granddaughter.<\/p>\n Mr. Plishka officially retired from the Metropolitan Opera after playing the Sacristan in \u201cTosca\u201d on Jan. 28, 2012. But he was invited back for 15 post-retirement performances as Beno\u00eet and Alcindoro in <\/em>Puccini\u2019s \u201cLa Boh\u00e8me\u201d<\/a> in the 2016-2017 season.<\/p>\n Mr. Plishka often insisted that he never wished to have been born a tenor, the usual male star of the stage.<\/p>\n \u201cThe role for a tenor is mostly one-dimensional,\u201d he said. \u201cHe\u2019s in love with the girl \u2014 and that\u2019s it. With a bass, the characters are much more complex.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Ash Wu contributed reporting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n