R.I.P. Giorgio Tozzi

[Reza]

Giorgio Tozzi




Giorgio Tozzi, who died on May 30 aged 88, was an
American operatic bass who once pawned his
clothes to pay for singing lessons; he appeared
for 21 seasons at the Metropolitan Opera House
while also making a career in musicals such as
Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific.

6:35PM BST 14 Jun 2011 UK Telegraph


His professional debut was on Broadway in the
American premiere of Britten's The Rape of
Lucretia in 1948, in which he played Tarquinius
to Kitty Carlisle's Lucretia. His appearances in
Europe, however, were all too rare.
Giorgio Tozzi

Giorgio Tozzi as Boris Godunov

Tozzi was a tall, imposing singer, adding force
and personality to title roles such as Boris
Godunov and Don Giovanni as well as thrilling
audiences when he played major parts such as Hans
Sachs (in Wagner's Die Meistersinger) and Philip II (Verdi's Don Carlo).

He was born George John Tozzi in Chicago on
January 8 1923, the son of an immigrant Italian
labourer. From his teens he took singing lessons,
but he entered DePaul University in Chicago with
the intention of becoming a biologist, only later switching to Music.

After war service with the US Army and his
Broadway debut, Tozzi made a brief appearance, in
July 1949, at the Adelphi Theatre, London, in the
musical Tough at the Top ("It was pure corn," he
later recalled). He then studied with Giulio
Lorandi in Milan where, in the style of La
Boh�me, he became heavily indebted. After pawning
two cameras and other belongings, he resorted to
pledging his clothes; what little money he had
covered his lessons. "I paid this religiously,
whether I ate or not," he later told The New York Times.

By 1953 he had recovered his shirt and was being
heard at La Scala, Milan. Returning to the United
States two years later (by now known as Giorgio,
thanks to the marketing department of RCA
Records), he went straight to the Met, making his
debut in Ponchielli's La Gioconda.

In 1958 he created the role of Doctor in Samuel
Barber's opera Vanessa at the Met. It was seen at
the Salzburg Festival in August that year, with
one British critic describing Tozzi as providing
"the one element of brilliance within the cast".

In 1965 he declined to take part in the Met's
Antony and Cleopatra, another new opera by
Barber. For many singers, such a refusal would
have ended their careers. The Met's general
manager Rudolf Bing, however, instead asked him
what role he would prefer. Tozzi, who had
previously sung Pogner in Die Meistersinger,
asked for the even more demanding part of Hans
Sachs. A ruptured spinal disc delayed his first
appearance, but he opened in January 1967 to warm
reviews, and it soon became his calling card. "I
became infatuated," he once said. "I saw Sachs as a true idealist."

His final appearance was in 1975 in La Boh�me,
alongside the young Jos� Carreras. He returned to
Broadway in 1979 to star in Frank Loesser's The
Most Happy Fella, for which he was nominated for
a Tony award. He also received three Grammys, one
of which was for his role in Georg Solti's 1963 A�da recording.

He is heard in the 1958 film of South Pacific,
dubbing the singing voice for Rossano Brazzi (who
played Emile de Becque). On one occasion, on a
West Coast tour of the show, Tozzi's leading lady
twisted her ankle on stage just as they were
about to dance. Rather than disrupt the
performance mid-scene, he put his arm around her
waist, held her in the air and danced for both of them.

While at the Met he taught at the Juilliard
School, and in retirement he was a professor at
Indiana University. He also published a novel,
The Golem of the Golden West (1997).

His first wife, Catherine Dieringer, whom he
married in 1954, predeceased him; he married
secondly, in 1967, the soprano Monte Amundsen,
who survives him with a son and a daughter.