Ezio Pinza in Opera

When Pinza made his first published recordings, in June 1923, he was thirty-one years old and had just completed his first full season at La Scala. He had 'arrived'. The journey had not been a smooth one: for one thing, the First World War intervened; for another, he set off originally in what proved to be a wrong direction. As a youngster, his great interest was not the voice but the bicycle. From delivery-boy he progressed to racing-champion, or at least to the second prize in a cycling competition at Ravenna, and he might well have spent the rest of his working days with the firm of manufacturers which, on the strength of this, offered him employment. It was his father who encouraged him to think seriously about singing, but a first audition brought the verdict: 'No voice'. He still sang, working now with a good teacher and eventually coming round to the discouraging auditioner a second time. Evidently a voice was now manifest, for Pinza was not merely accepted as a pupil but supported financially too. A provincial debut followed in Soncino, near Cremona, where he sang the role of Oroveso in Norma. This was in 1914, and the year was hardly auspicous. He spent most of the war in the Dolomites (it later helped his breathing), was promoted to Captain, got married, and then tried the opera circuit once more. Luck turned when he joined the company at the Costanzi in his native Rome where he acquired experience and a repertoire. Conductors and critics began to take note, and in 1922 he was heard by Toscanini, whose impending (and important) production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg enrolled him as Pogner and thus brought him to La Scala.

His other roles in the great house included the blind man in the premiere of Pizzetti's Deborah e Jaele, the father in Louise, Pimen in Boris Godunov, and two Wagnerian kings, Henry in Lohengrin and Marke in And what magnificence of voice and style these early records capture! In the The Milan recordings end with the Faust duet. The follwing year, 1925, was a busy one, but no records were made. Then in November 1926 came his debut at the Metropolitan, New York, and with remarkably little delay his first session for the premier American recording company, Victor. Here now, with the electrical process in operation, the texture of his voice and the light-and-shade of its usage are more fully appreciable. Certainly this is the singer and the artist in his prime: one fully able to hold his own in the formidable company of signers assembled in the Met at that time. At his debut the cast of Spontini's La Vestale was headed by Ponselle, Matzenauer, Lauri-Volpi and De Luca. The season would also bring La Gioconda with Ponselle, Gigli and Ruffo, La Forza del Destino with Ponselle and Martinelli, Il Barbiere di Siviglia with Galli-Curci and De Luca, Boris Godunov with Chaliapin. The confidence placed in him by Gatti-Casazza's management is clear, both from the fact that he was honoured by being accorded for his debut a place in such an important house premiere on the opening night, but also in the number of performances and new roles given him as the season progressed. Towards the end of it, in a cast headed by himself with Ponselle, Martinelli and Tibbett, he sang for the first time a role in which he made a particularly strong impression, that of the blind king Archebaldo in L'Amore dei Tre Re. Over the years his performance was to deepen, but in 1928 it was already hailed as a masterpiece of the lyric theatre: "an artist second to none" reported the critic of the New York World.

In the New York world at large, and over the United States in general, Pinza became a national figure. He seasons at the Metropolitan continued until 1948, his appearances there totalling 637, with 241 added on the company's tours. He sang 51 roles in the house and took part in another 74 concerts and gala performances. Although the opera in which he appeared most often was Aïda (77 times), frequently with Martinelli as Radamès, as in the recording of the Temple Scene heard in this collection, his 'star' role was undoubtedly Don Giovanni, given first as a controversial piece of casting (a bass for a baritone role) in 1929, not long before the two solos were recorded for Victor. After that, in frequency of performance, came Méphistophélès, Don Basilio in Il Barbiere and Mozart's Figaro. At the other end, there were three operas in which he was heard at the Met once only (Linda di Chamounix, Tristan und Isolde and Turandot). Premieres and rarities include Resphighi's La Campana Sommersa, Pizzetti's Fra Gherardo and Alfano's Madonna imperia. There are surprising entries in the list such as Sorochintsy Fair, The Bartered Bride and The Golden Cockerel, and one still has to remind oneself that he was also a distinguished Boris Godunov.

Yet it was for none of this that he became most widely known. When the New York Times, some days before his death in 1957, reported that he had suffered a stroke, he was described as "star of Broadway musical success, Today he is remembered essentially for such singing as we hear in this anthology. We also recall that he was an international singer, with a highly successful career at Salzburg, Covent Garden, the Colòn and the leading opera houses of his own country. Though his crowning achievements were generally considered to be in Don Giovanni and Boris Godunov, it is doubtful whether posterity will think of him primarily in those connections. My own belief is that, if future generations still care for such things, they will prize, more than the Mozart and Mussorgsky, his singing of the Verdi Requiem, where, over half a century later his voice still rings in the mind as the ideal. But perhaps most of all it will be the voice heard in recordings of the period represented here that will survive. Noble, sonorous, richly beautiful, beautifully controlled: the sound will suddenly come afresh to people as they take out their old records or listen to somebody else's, and ten-to-one they will then reflect that they have never heard from any comparable voice a sound to match it.