A Date With The Devil - Berlioz, Liszt, Et Al / Samuel Ramey

The American bass Samuel Ramey was born in 1942 and studied in Wichita and New York He made his d�but with the New York City Opera in 1973 as Zuniga in Bizet's Carmen. Later roles undertaken for the same company include those or Mephistopheles in the operas by Gounod and by Boito and the darker villains of Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann. He appeared as Niek Shadow at Glyndebourne in 1977, undertaking the same role at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the New York Metropolitan Opera, the Teatro Col�n and in 1992 for Aix-en-Provence. He made his Covent Garden d�but in 1982 as Figaro in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, a role in which he had appeared in the previous season at the Vienna State Opera and at La Scala, Milan. It was for him that Covent Garden devised a staged version or The Damnation of Faust by Berlioz and he has also been heard there in Gounod's Faust and in Offenbach's last opera. Samuel Ramey has won a name for himself in the major bass roles in Verdi and Rossini, making his d�b