Ezio Pinza

Fortunato Pinza entered the world on 8 May 1892 in Rome, Italy, and left it on 9 May 1957 in Stamford, Connecticut. An established operatic bass, he trained at the Bologna Conservatory and stepped onto the professional stage for the first time in 1914. Once World War I ended, he performed at leading Italian theaters and held a post at La Scala, Milan, between 1922 and 1924. His first appearance in New York came at the Metropolitan Opera in 1926, where he remained for the next twenty-two seasons without interruption. Throughout the 1930s he also sang in London and at other European houses; by the late 1940s he had stepped away from the Met to pursue work on Broadway. There he created the part of Emil de Becque in South Pacific (1949) opposite Mary Martin. The production enjoyed an extended run of 1,925 performances and brought Pinza a Tony Award for Best Actor. Four years later he portrayed César in Fanny (1954), another hit that played 888 times.

Pinza’s screen work included Carnegie Hall (1947), essentially a concert film built around classical selections and featuring the voices of Lily Pons, Risë Stevens and Jan Peerce, with Harry James and Vaughn Monroe added for wider appeal. In Mr. Imperium (1951, released in the UK as You Belong To My Heart) he played a European royal pursuing a former pop singer who had become a movie star, Lana Turner. The picture contained songs by Harold Arlen and Dorothy Fields, a score by Bronislaw Kaper, and musical direction by Johnny Green; although the film itself drew little notice, Pinza performed effectively, delivering the British title song with the Guadalajara Trio and sharing one chorus with Turner, whose vocals were supplied by Trudy Irwin. That same year, in Strictly Dishonorable, he appeared as an Italian opera singer alongside Janet Leigh. In 1953 he took the role of the renowned operatic bass Feodor Chaliapin in the biopic Tonight We Sing, which chronicled the career of impresario Sol Hurok.