ROME - Nicolai Ghiaurov, a Bulgarian-born opera singer with a sumptuous voice who became one of the great basses of the post-World War II era, died Wednesday in central Italy of a heart attack. He was 74.

Ghiaurov, who specialized in late 19th-century works and often performed with his wife, the star Italian soprano Mirella Freni, died at Hesperia Hospital clinic near their home in Modena. He had been at the facility for almost three weeks, said Dr. Pasquale Maglieri.

"With the passing of Nicolai Ghiaurov, the world of music has lost a giant," Placido Domingo said in statement.

"For me he was the last great bass for Verdi operas in history," said tenor Carlo Bergonzi, who performed with Ghiaurov in many of the great opera houses. "His death leaves a void in the opera scene."

"Even when he talked the tone of his voice was beautiful," said Giorgio Gualerze, an opera critic in Turin who knew Ghiaurov. "It was a great voice and one that does not as yet have heirs."

Born on Sept 13, 1929, in the small, mountainous town of Velingrad in southern Bulgaria, Ghiaurov studied opera singing at the Sofia Musical Academy and continued his studies in Moscow.

His career got off to an auspicious start when he won top prizes at opera-singing festivals in Warsaw and Paris.

He returned to Bulgaria, where he made his debut at the Sofia National Opera as Don Basilio in Rossini's "The Barber of Seville," in 1955. That same year, he was appointed a soloist at the Sofia Opera, but his sparkling career was to take him farther afield.

He performed at Moscow's Bolshoi Theater, the Vienna State Opera, the Paris Opera, Milan's La Scala, London's Covent Garden and New York's Metropolitan Opera, among other houses.

William Mason, general director of the Lyric Opera of Chicago, said Ghiaurov last performed there in 1997.

"It was a big enormous voice, a big beautiful voice that just surrounded you," Mason said. "He was one of the foremost operatic basses of his time."

His finest roles included Mephistopheles in Charles Gounod's "Faust"; Philip II in Verdi's "Don Carlo"; the title character in Mozart's "Don Giovanni"; and the title role of Boris Godunov in Mussorgsky's opera.

Ghiaurov made his Metropolitan Opera debut on Nov. 8, 1965 as Mephistopheles. He sang a total of 81 performances in 10 roles, last appearing on Oct. 26, 1996, as Sparafucile in Verdi's "Rigoletto." In March 1991, Ghiaurov and Freni were given a gala performance along with Spanish tenor Alfredo Kraus to honor their 25th anniversaries with the company.

In January, he was still singing, performing the role of Rossini's Don Basilio at the Malibran theater in Venice — the same role in which he made his debut almost 50 years earlier in Sofia.

In a 1996 interview with the Bulgarian state news agency BTA, Ghiaurov compared his career to "a jagged mountain with peaks."

Looking back on his decades in opera, he said his drive remained as strong as ever and noted his "ambition and desire to be perfect in what I have undertaken to do."

Gualerze, the critic in Turin, said "he will be remembered as one of the great bass voices of the postwar period." "A great voice, in the material sense of the word — a sumptuous voice," he said.

Ghiaurov is survived by his wife. He had two children from his first marriage to pianist Zlatina Mishakova — a son, Vladimir, and a daughter, Elena, BTA said.

A funeral was expected to be held in Modena on Saturday.

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Associated Press writers Veselin Toshkov in Sofia, Bulgaria, and Ronald Blum in New York contributed to this report.

Nicolai Ghiaurov, the Bulgarian bass who was one of the leading opera singers of his day, died yesterday in Modena, Italy. He was 74.

The cause was heart failure, said Jack Mastroianni, his American representative. He had been hospitalized because of a kidney disease. His wife, the soprano Mirella Freni, was with him when he died, Mr. Mastroianni said.

Mr. Ghiaurov's warm, rich bass voice made him ideal for roles like King Philip in Verdi's "Don Carlo" or the title role in Moussorgsky's "Boris Godounov," both of which were among his signature roles. His vocal power and striking stage presence helped gain him the kind of accolades opera usually reserves for its tenors and sopranos.

His Metropolitan Opera debut, in November 1965, as Mephistopheles in Gounod's "Faust," received rapturous reviews.

"The man indeed is sensational," Harold C. Schonberg wrote in The New York Times. "He not only has a remarkable voice, but he is also big in every way." He added, "He has presence, the kind that Pinza and Chaliapin had, the kind that jumps over the footlights and seizes the listener in a palpable embrace." By then, Mr. Ghiaurov was already a star in Europe; his American debut, at the Chicago Lyric Opera, had taken place two years earlier. His Met debut would have come earlier, too, he told an interviewer in 1965, but a tenor accidentally got in the way. At a party in Milan, Rudolf Bing, the Met's general manager, made Mr. Ghiaurov an offer, which was overheard by Franco Corelli. According to Mr. Ghiaurov, Corelli "became very excited" and said to Bing, "How dare you offer him so little?" "From then on, everything was ruined in that discussion," Mr. Ghiaurov said.

As beloved as he was in New York, Mr. Ghiaurov never created a home base there of the kind he had in Europe; he sang 81 performances of 10 roles at the Met, including a gala in 1991 celebrating the 25th anniversaries his debut, Ms. Freni's and the tenor Alfredo Kraus's; he also appeared in the Met's centennial gala in 1983. His last performance there was in 1996, in "Rigoletto."

He remained active in Europe, however. In 2001, he tried out a new role, Dosifey, the old believer, in Moussorgsky's "Khovanshchina," in a new production in Zurich, having often sung Khovansky in the same opera. In December in Venice, he sang Basilio in Rossini's "Barber of Seville," the role in which he made his operatic debut in Sofia in 1955. In January of this year, he sang the high priest Ramphis in Verdi's "Aida" in Monte Carlo, the role of his debut Vienna State Opera in 1957.

His remarkable vocal longevity was often attributed to his choice of roles suited to his voice and to his care in later years not to overextend himself with too many performances.

Born in 1929 in Velingrad, Bulgaria, Mr. Ghiaurov studied violin, clarinet and piano as a child. Even after his vocal abilities became clear, he seriously considered becoming a conductor; he studied both voice and conducting at the Moscow Conservatory, which he attended after studies at the Academy of Music in Sofia.

In 1955, he won a vocal competition in Warsaw, where he met his first wife, Zlatina, a pianist. They had two children, who survive him, along with Ms. Freni: Vladimir Ghiaurov, a conductor in Bulgaria, and Elena Ghiaurov, an actress in Italy.

After his operatic debut, Mr. Ghiaurov's progress was rapid: Bologna in 1958, La Scala in 1959, Covent Garden in 1962.

"It is not entirely good to move up with such speed," he told an interviewer. "I do not have the long experience with the smaller roles first. Almost from the beginning it is the big roles."

A sense of his magnetism is preserved in Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1967 film of the Verdi Requiem conducted by Herbert von Karajan, with a young Luciano Pavarotti.

Ms. Freni and Mr. Ghiaurov first sang together in 1961, in "Faust," in Genoa, Italy. At the time, they were both married to other people. In later interviews, they disagreed about exactly when they got together. They married in 1978, and lived in Modena.

"In the United States," Mr. Ghiaurov said in 1965, "there is a tendency to compare that is not very just. Every artist should be taken on his own values. To tell the truth, I would much rather be judged as the first Ghiaurov — even if a small Ghiaurov — than a second Chaliapin. Chaliapin was a genius. But I do not want to imitate anybody."