Music: Reunion in San Francisco

It was the second act of La Bohême, the cafe scene, where a cart filled with toys is dragged onstage, followed by laughing children. One of the kids was obviously more taken than the others by the singing of famed Metropolitan Basso Ezio Pinza, who was playing Colline. The admiration came naturally: it was his six-year-old daughter, Claudia.

That night in San Francisco was the only time that Claudia was ever allowed on an opera stage with her father. But as a child, she traveled with him on his tours, listened to him from opera-house wings, dressed up in his paints and costumes. That touring ended the day daddy made the tabloid headlines. Mme. Pinza sued Soprano Elisabeth Rethberg for $250,000 for alienation of affections. She later withdrew the suit, but divorced Ezio and took Claudia with her to Italy.

For eleven years, Claudia never saw her father, and rarely heard from him. He became the Met’s top basso, and a great box-office attraction. A handsome six-footer, his pressagents referred to him as “a Roman god come to life, one of the 14 most glamorous men in the world.”

In Italy, daughter Claudia took singing lessons, at 17 made her debut in Orfeo at La Scala, and sang in the Bologna opera house. Last January, while Ezio sat nervously in the audience, 25-year-old Claudia made her U.S. debut in Washington, D.C.

Last week, Ezio and Claudia were back in San Francisco together. This time, Claudia occupied a star’s dressing room, sang the long and difficult part of Marguerite to her father’s Mephistopheles in the San Francisco Opera Association’s performance of Faust. Greying, 55-year-old Ezio had rehearsed her privately until she was note-and letter-perfect. He wanted to be sure: “I am not one to enthuse. I won’t overrate anything. You never can say it is in the bag, until it is, is that not so?”

Claudia was sure of one thing: “It has always been my dream to sing with him.”