Bechi, one of Italy's most noted baritones, had sung Alfio in the La voce del padrone recording of Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana under the composer's direction in 1940.

[1] Dryden recorded an album of arias and songs in 1987 (reviewed in Das Orchester during the same year) before making his operatic debut in a nationally televised production as Uberto in Pergolesi's La serva padrona in 1988.

During this time, he was noted for numerous interviews dealing with such personalities as Magda Olivero, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Sherrill Milnes, Martina Arroyo, Carlisle Floyd, Birgit Nilsson, Astrid Varnay, Wolfgang Wagner, Simonetta Puccini, Inge Borkh, Gina Cigna, Dame Eva Turner, Maria Carbone, Adelaide Saraceni, Virginia Zeani and Alexander, Crown Prince of Yugoslavia.

[1] Dryden may be credited for advancing musical research in the realm of Italian operatic composers during the Fin de siècle that, until the advent of his works, centered almost exclusively on Puccini.

His uncovering of original manuscripts – whether of composers Giacomo Meyerbeer and Ruggiero Leoncavallo or author E. T. A. Hoffmann – enabled many archives to acquire invaluable material.

Whether it was simply the inaccurate date of Leoncavallo's birth, or that his opera Edipo Re was solely an adaptation of the earlier Der Roland von Berlin or that his Sardou-based La jeunesse de Figaro never existed was, until these publications, relatively, if not completely, unknown.