Black sea baritone: Fred Cohn talks to Lado Ataneli, a genuine Verdian from deep in the heart of Tbilisi.

Bona fide Verdi baritones are a rare breed nowadays, but there's no question that Lado Ataneli fits the bill. In his first Met season this year, the thirty-eight-year-old Georgian took on two key roles, Germont and Nabucco, and demonstrated the suitability of his dark, brawny baritone for the Verdi repertoire. It's a voice big enough to ride easily over the ensemble in Nabucco's clamorous Act I finale, yet capable of sustaining a plangent legato in Germont's "Di Provenza."

Ataneli looks just like he sounds. He'S a towering man, solid as a rock, with his black hair pulled back in a ponytail. He would even be intimidating, but his liquid brown eyes convey an outsize measure of personal warmth. His physical presence conjures the big, biting sound that rings through the opera house. That sound is there in his speech, too: even though he hardly speaks above a whisper, a palpable reserve of power dings to the voice like resin.

We meet in the sitting room of his hotel in New York. His wife, Manana Tchikovani, joins us. They've brought along a friend, Georgian pianist Karlo J. Begiev, to act as interpreter, but Ataneli himself does most of the talking, in halting but expressive English.

He explains that, for all intents and purposes, he was born into his repertoire. "Some baritones may come later to sing dramatic roles, but with me it was natural," he says. "Even when I was sixteen, there was a trace of something in the voice. Younger singers want to sing the lyric roles, because they want to sing for many years. I wanted to also, but when everybody heard my voice, dark and strong, they said, 'Oh, a dra-matic baritone!' But I think I am not really so dramatic."

"Lyric-dramatic!" Tchikovani interjects.

The Italian repertoire has always been congenial to Ataneli. He attributes this to a regional affinity between Georgia and Italy. "It's the climate that makes the voices," he says. "The Black Sea is like the Mediterranean--think of Ghiaurov from Bulgaria." His teacher, tenor Nodar Andguladze, studied at La Scala in the 1960s and indoctrinated his student in the Italian style. And Ataneli has made a dose study of Italian baritones on recordings to pick up fine points of pronunciation.

The voice's intrinsic power led to an offer of Scarpia as Ataneli's first role outside Georgia. At first, he balked. "I said, 'No, no, no!' It's a role for older singers, at the end of the career!" He turned to Andguladze. "Maestro said to me, 'Lado, don't say no. It's your first presentation in Europe. You must say yes, but you must sing with your voice, with your timbre. You must control your emission. Don't push ...