Word: pinza
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...last week kissed his wife good-by in suburban Mamaroneck, swung behind the wheel of a Clipper model Packard and drove to Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House. There he encased himself in the beard and trappings of an ancient czar. Exactly one hour after his arrival, Ezio Pinza, with a regal bearing that scattered stagehands right & left, stubbed out the butt of a lighted cigaret and strode through the wings as Boris Godunoff...
Ezio was playing Boris for the 50th time. For him, every groan and stagger of Modest Moussorgsky's doom-shadowed hero was an old story. But Pinza as usual sang and acted every line with half-crazed intensity, made the part so live that his audience could almost smell the sweat of medieval Moscow. Next day critics tried hard to find a new way of saying that Ezio Pinza is the world's greatest operatic basso, the greatest singing actor of his generation...
...Pinza, who has been singing at the Met for 16 years, is the answer to an impresario's prayer. He can sing any of 55 operatic roles at a few hours' notice. He has no objection to playing minor roles, usually succeeds in making them seem major. No scene-stealer, he can be counted on to help inexperienced members of the cast. A wonderful example of what the Italians call a basso cantante ("singing bass"), he combines baritone agility with bass sonority and boom. That voice, at the Metropolitan and in concert tours, grosses between...
Outside the opera house Basso Pinza looks like a prosperous retired bullfighter. He works over his roles as systematically as a strategist planning a campaign, ransacking Manhattan's libraries, boning up on history, costumes, manners. To make his Boris Godunoff fall dead with proper dignity, he practiced hurling his 191 lb. on to the Metropolitan's floor boards for hours, until he was so badly bruised he could hardly walk...
Free again in the land of the free was veteran operatic Basso Ezio Pinza after two and a half months on Ellis Island as a potentially dangerous enemy alien. Roman-born Pinza was released on parole announced his intention of doing everything he could to help the United Nations win the war, resuming his career...