Ezio Pinza

Ezio Pinza.

Ezio Pinza (May 18, 1892 - May 9 1957) was an Italian basso opera singer. He spent 22 seasons at New York's Metropolitan Opera, appearing in more than 750 performances of 50 operas. He also sang to great acclaim at La Scala, Milan, and at the Royal Opera House in London's Covent Garden. After retiring from the Met in 1948, he enjoyed a fresh career on Broadway in the musical theatre and appeared in several films.

Biography

Pinza was born in modest circumstances in Rome in 1892 and grew up in Ravenna. He studied at Bologna's Conservatorio Martini and his operatic debut came in 1914, as Oroveso in Norma, in Cremona.

Ezio Pinza (left) jokes with Jimmy Durante as Pinza leaves his imprints at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Los Angeles, 1953.

After enduring four years of military service during World War I, Pinza resumed his operatic career in Rome in 1919. He then sang at Italy's foremost opera house, La Scala, Milan, making his debut there in February 1922. At La Scala, under the direction of the brilliant and exacting principal conductor Arturo Toscanini, Pinza's career blossomed during the course of the next few seasons due to the high quality of his singing and the attractiveness of his stage presence.

Pinza's Met debut occurred in November 1926 in Spontini's La Vestale, with the famed American soprano Rosa Ponselle in the title role. In 1929, he sang Don Giovanni, a role with which he was subsequently to become closely identified. He subsequently added the Mozart roles Figaro (in 1940) and Sarastro (in 1942) to his repertoire, as well as a vast number of Italian operatic roles of Vincenzo Bellini, Gaetano Donizetti, and Giuseppe Verdi, as well as Modest Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov (sung in Italian). Apart from the Met, Pinza appeared at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 1930-1939 and was invited to sing at the Salzburg Festival in 1934-1937 by the celebrated German conductor Bruno Walter.

Pinza sang once again under the baton of Toscanini in 1935, this time with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, as the bass soloist in performances of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis. One of these performances was broadcast by CBS and preserved on transcription discs; this recording has been issued on LPs and CDs. He also sang in the February 6, 1938, NBC Symphony Orchestra's broadcast performance of Beethoven's ninth symphony. These performances both took place in Carnegie Hall.

Pinza's repertoire consisted of some 95 classical parts. He retired from the Met in 1948 and embarked on a second career in Broadway musicals. In April 1949, he appeared in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific, originating the role of French Planter Emil de Becque, and his operatic-style, highly expressive performance of the hit song "Some Enchanted Evening" made him a matinee idol and a national celebrity. In 1950, he received a Tony Award for best lead actor in a musical. (His understudy in the musical, Richard Eastham, went on to establish an acting career.)

Pinza became a member of Westchester Country Club in Rye, New York, and lived in a private house adjacent to the fifth golf hole of the South Course. In 1953, he had his own short-lived NBC situation comedy, Bonino, in which he appeared as a recently-widowed Italian-American opera singer trying to rear his six children. Two of the children were portrayed by Van Dyke Parks and Chet Allen, who had also been with the American Boychoir. Then in 1954, he appeared in the Broadway production of Fanny opposite Florence Henderson.

The grave of Ezio Pinza

Shortly before his death, Pinza completed his memoirs, which were published in 1958 by Rinehart & Co., Inc. Photos of his career, as well as images of his family, were included in the book.

Pinza died at the age of 64 in Stamford, Connecticut. His funeral was held at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. He is interred at Putnam Cemetery, in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Being devoid of academic training, Pinza was unable to sight-read a musical score. He would listen, however, to his part being played on the piano, and having heard it, could then sing it accurately, such was the precision of his ear. With regard to the lineage of great basses produced by Italy, Pinza succeeded Francesco Navarini and Vitorrio Arimondi, both of whom had international careers and were at their vocal peak prior to World War I. (He also succeeded the Spaniard Jose Mardones, who had appeared regularly in the Italian operatic repertory in America, with the Boston and Met companies, between 1909 and 1926.) Tancredi Pasero, whose voice sounded remarkably similar to Pinza's but who was the possessor of a less magnetic personality, was his chief contemporary rival among Italian-born basses.

Pinza appeared in several films, beginning with 1947's Carnegie Hall. This film featured a number of famous classical singers, musicians, conductors, and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. He also can be seen in a few MGM movies (in Technicolor), including Mr. Imperium with Lana Turner and Strictly Dishonorable, both released in 1951. His final film appearance was as the famous Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin in the Technicolor film biography of impressario Sol Hurok, which was entitled Tonight We Sing (1953). During this film, Pinza sang a portion of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov in the original Russian.

He hosted his own television program during 1951 and continued to make appearances on American TV until 1955.

Pinza had sung opposite many celebrated singers at the Met during his heyday. They included, among others, such international stars as Rosa Ponselle, Elisabeth Rethberg, Giovanni Martinelli, Beniamino Gigli, Lawrence Tibbett and Giuseppe De Luca. As an interesting bit of trivia, though far from constituting a fitting memorial, all of the water fountains serving the audience at the Met in the Lincoln Center are dedicated to him.

Pinza like a number of singers (such as De Luca and Martinelli ) was in essence adopted by the United States, held in great esteem there, and may, it is argued, have a kudos greater than they in fact deserve in a global setting.

Recordings

Pinza recorded extensively for HMV and the Victor Talking Machine Company during his prime in the 1920s and 1930s. These 78-rpm discs consist largely of individual operatic arias and some ensemble pieces (plus a complete Verdi Requiem conducted by Tullio Serafin in 1939). They are prized by music critics and general listeners alike for the exceptional beauty of voice and the fine musicianship that Pinza displays on them. Today, they are freely available on various CD reissues.

As late as 1953, Pinza was still committing arias to disc, although his voice was now in obvious decline. Previously, in the mid-1940s, he had made a few 78-rpm albums for Columbia Records that have been re-released since on CD. He occasionally recorded popular songs and was featured on Columbia's original cast recording of South Pacific with Mary Martin, which was sold on both LP and 78-rpm discs. This recording has been digitally remastered from the original magnetic tapes by Sony and reissued on CD. Pinza performed, too, on the RCA Victor original cast album of Fanny in 1954.

References

• The Grand Tradition by John Steane, Duckworth, London, 1974.
• The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera (second edition), edited by Harold Rosenthal and John Warrack, Oxford University Press, London, 1980.
• Liner notes from Ezio Pinza: Bass Arias, Pearl CD, GEM 0061, issued in 1999; and from Ezio Pinza: Opera Arias, EMI CD, CDH 7 64253 2, issued in 1992.

External links

• Ezio Pinza at Find a Grave
• Please use a more specific IBDB template. See the documentation for available templates.
• MetOpera database