Groaning Gondolier

'Bruno Quirinetta is an Italian Bing Crosby, Phil Harris and Spike Jones all rolled into one. Recording with his seven-piece Orchestra Quirinetta, he is one of Italy's biggest-selling popular artists. Wherever he plays at fashionable clubs in Rome, Milan, Florence or Rapallo, Italians surrender in droves to his particular brand of gaiety--an infectious mixture of nonsense and nostalgia.

Bruno was not releasing any figures on his income last week--he did not care to let the tax collectors in on anything so personal--but he was as close to a rage as any pop musician can get in a land of opera lovers.

Gurgling Florentine. A chunky, irrepressible man with a hair-in-the-eyes resemblance to the movies' late Lew ("Monkeys is the cwaziest people") Lehr, Bruno, 39, started out as a singing gondolier in his native Venice. After four years of that, and a few handsome and encouraging tips, he decided he could do as well or better just singing and entertaining without straining his back in the bargain. During the war he had to give up his orchestra ("Italians were too depressed to enjoy cheerful dance music"), eked out a living by trading on the black market. But since then Bruno, who changed his name from Baldini to Quirinetta after making his first big hit in Rome's Quirinetta nightclub, has become roughly as popular as ravioli.

No wooden baton-waver (in fact, he usually leads from the drums), Bruno gets deep into the act, taking his place in the conga line, occasionally even cutting in on couples dancing past. Gurgled one fat Florentine matron after a round with the master in the Posso di Beatrice, a cellar nightclub in a 13th Century palace: "This Bruno makes me feel like a five-year-old."

Simple Charleston. When he is not dancing, or groaning in a hoarse baritone, he circuit-rides the tables diagnosing customers' needs. Says Bruno: "The aristocracy lives in the nostalgic past; I give them nostalgic songs ... and for that they love my music. If I hear people speaking a foreign language, I always include songs from their countries." Aristocrats and foreigners alike seem to enjoy one of his prescriptions: his dance arrangements of familiar arias from Italian operas. So far he has turned bits from The Barber of Seville, Rigoletto and Trovatore into sambas; one of his biggest hits is a dance number derived from Carmen in which he sings a jumble of meaningless words in a high falsetto while the rest of the band chimes in with a robust Toreador chorus.

One of his current enthusiasms, which he was teaching to dignified Florentines last week: a revival of the Charleston. Says Bruno: "The Charleston has a simple rhythm which Italians like."

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