Basso Sospiro 2022

Basso wants to describe a situation.
Suddenly silence falls in the theatre, the melody announces the voice of the basso, which captures and transports everyone with its vibrations. The basso usually does not play the leading role in opera, but often represents divine, supreme characters (just think of Arrigo Boito's Mefistofele), a voice that leaves everyone mesmerised.
Basso is a fragrance that opens with very clear grapefruit notes, softened and made slightly sharp by the spices and ‘tamed’ by the very light floral side.
I see it initially very bright, sunny, and then in the evolution taking on deeper and more important traits.
This is why in my opinion it has no seasonality, being wonderfully multifaceted.
Excellent performance.

I speak as a studied musician and bass player of 30 years. This is more tenor than bass. From the name, I’d think this would be more about thick, deep, resinous notes. Clearly it’s not.

Bright, green, grassy, floral, sour grapefruit citrusy, spicy, peppery. On the color spectrum, I visualize orange, green, earthy tones.

Comparatively, sits between TdH Parfum and Roja’s Isola Blu. Isola Blu is more colorful, like light refracted through a prism, fruitier, juicier, brighter, sweeter in the base, more cheerful particularly in the opening hour. They become more similar in the dry down. Bear in mind these are subtle differences I’m speaking of. These two are very, very close and the differences come out only on close inspection.

I do have to say that the dry down does become a bit muddled here after an hour or so while Isola Blu retains the note separation and distinctness. The latter is somewhat higher quality but you will pay dearly for that very small difference.

Performance is comparative to the two aforementioned. Ultimately about average for a fresh citrusy perfume, or what I like to refer to as classy sillage, for yourself and those close to you. For all day enjoyment, you’ll want to take a travel sprayer. Eg. if you spray before going to work you’ll probably want to spray again on your lunch break.

I would not call Basso a great fragrance, but I do really enjoy it as I don’t demand too much from fresh citrusy summer fragrances. It’s an easy, likable wear with enough depth and complexity to keep me interested.

For those with small collections, this would be redundant if you had TdH Parfum or Isola Blu. For those like me with larger collections, you may find enough nuanced differences to have any or all of these. I am biased towards this one because of the name and my love for bass playing. And the quality and price ratio sits nicely in the attainable luxury spectrum: better than a standard designer and not outrageously priced where I’d need to worry about my bank account with every spray. But once my travel atomizer of Isola Blu is gone I’ll likely be purchasing a bottle of that too to wear on more rare occasions.

Edit: I keep coming back to this thought. This is the smell of Sprite as a perfume.

Basso is an elegant woody citrus with some nice added spice. From first spray my eyes opened and I I was like damn this smells really good. It’s like vibratos bigger more mature brother. The added woods and spice make it a bit more dense and a bit more masculine than vibrato I think. It is fully unisex, but I think this one’s a bit deeper and more masculine. It does a few things differently then vibrato so it’s not redundant to own both in my book. I feel basso works a tad bit better in the cooler wether with the woods and spices but I’m sure it will also be a beast in the warm air. Over all I’m really enjoying this one. This is my first wear so I may update later on With performance traits but beings Sospiro I’m not worried.

Looking at these notes, they scream feminine mediocrity to me. I fully expected this to lean feminine and not really be anything special, but I was completely wrong about that.

This is a beautiful, perfectly unisex composition. It's so seamlessly blended that it's hard to discern any one note other than the bright burst of citrus right off the top.

It has a robust sillage and offers great performance, even in cold weather. It completely took me by surprise on this 35* windy winter day. I can only imagine what it will do with a little warmth.

I don’t often make blind purchases, I think there were two possibly one was Gentle Fluidity (Silver)
which I did not like.

Blind buys is almost always a bad idea which rarely turns out well. This one is no different.

I got a bottle very cheap on one of the websites, from a link on this site so credit to Parfumo. I did not pay much it had a steep discount and sold out quickly at the time.

My wife, son and I had been in Harrods (I wanted to try some of the exclusives) this was one on my try list but they did not have it however they did have Isola Blu Parfum which I knew was super close.
I got a sample on card and thought it was great so what could go wrong?

So basso blind buy in the bag based off another fragrance on card. Idiot.

Batch code showed the product was fairly recent, ten months or so I think. 17125L

The opening is incredible. No doubt at all one of the best citrus openings round. 10/10 it really is. That lasts for around ten to fifteen minutes as it fades the earthy rooty vetiver with something disagreeable it might be oak moss I am not 100% sure.

If the opening is a ten the dry down is a three for me I just don’t like it.
It makes for an excellent office scent.

Basso has some 30+ reviews and 200+ statements with a score of 8.5 I do wonder how much impact the ‘free bottle brigade/Dubai’ influencers have had on this score?

Be careful to test this if possible, be wary of the hype train…

This has been given to my son. It does, as usual, smell better on him. The green dry dry down is richer/fuller. I still don’t like it though. If only that opening….