Cesare Siepi, 87, one of the greatest operatic basses of all time, died July 5 at a hospital in Atlanta. He died of respiratory failure, after having a stroke several days ago, according to his son, Marco.

Warm, deep, resonant and melting, Siepi’s voice was a defining sound in opera in the 1950s and 1960s.

For years, he was the reigning bass at the Metropolitan Opera, and a regular fixture at London’s Covent Garden and many other houses around the world, singing virtually all the staple roles of the bass repertory.: perhaps most memorably, the title role of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni.”

He was one of the few Giovannis who could both sing with the sensuous, seductive ease the role requires and look the part of the irresistible seducer. He owned the role for decades, even making a film of the opera under German conductor and composer Wilhelm Furtwängler .

Cesare Siepi was born Feb. 10, 1923, in Milan. His father was an accountant and his mother a homemaker. His father died when the boy was 16, and a half brother was killed during World War II on the Russian front, leaving him alone with his mother.

Vocally, he was a natural talent. He began singing with a madrigal group at 14, made his concert debut at 17, won a scholarship to a music academy in Milan, and in 1941 made his operatic debut singing Sparafucile in Verdi’s “Rigoletto.”

Siepi attracted widespread critical praise. “Clearly a fine musician and an artist,” wrote the composer and critic Virgil Thomson in the New York Herald Tribune.

“His rich bass voice, moreover, is both vibrant and warm. It is a beautiful voice and seems to be thoroughly schooled. Siepi’s dramatic performance was no less distinguished than his vocal work.”