He Gives Them Chills

Off & away on tour last week (its 37th), the Metropolitan Opera ran into a wartime transportation problem: its 17 freight cars, full of scenery and costumes, were classified and shipped as personal baggage of the 350 company members. But the tour promised to be worth whatever trouble it cost. In Baltimore and in Boston, clamoring queues were turned away from the box offices. In the six cities yet to be visited, advance sales soared.

On tour, as well as in the Met's big, money-making Manhattan season, the traditional enthusiasm for Verdi and Wagner was being challenged by an increased popular demand for the lighthearted operas of Mozart. Many suspected that this de mand for Mozart was really a demand for Ezio Pinza -- the brawny, lusty-voiced, 52-year-old basso who sings the Mozart scores to a fare-ye-well. As Don Giovanni, Figaro and Sarastro (in The Magic Flute} the former Italian bicycle racer had be come the Met's most reliable attraction.

To keep U.S. newspaper editors interested in Basso Pinza, his agents are now circulating a glossy, 60-page book which describes the singer as "a bronze Roman god come to life [and] one of the 14 most glamorous men in the world. . . ." He "sends chills down feminine spines." The press book urges household editors to mull over Pinza's recipe for Verona fish pudding; farm editors are assured that he is a poultry breeder. Pinza fans, under the spell of their hero, see nothing amiss in this ballyhoo: they consider him every bit as good as the overblown Pinza publicity says he is.

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