brazzi + tozzi = yum

Okay, I admit it. I am a sucker for musicals. South Pacific, 1958 is the perfect summer flick. Here's one of my all time favorite songs from the movie. Believe it or not, this fabulous voice does not belong to the dreamy Rossano Brazzi. It's that of the opera star Giorgio Tozzi, who was for many years a leading bass with the Metropolitan Opera, seen playing lead roles in nearly every major opera house worldwide. Tozzi's fabulous voice is the reason I love listening to this particular rendition of the song. The combination of Brazzi and Tozzi makes one incredibly delicious man.

After dubbing in the singing parts for Brazzi in South Pacific, Tozzi spent many years playing the role of de Becque himself in various revivals and road tours of the show, including one at Lincoln Center in the late 1960s. In 1980, Tozzi earned a Tony award nomination for best leading actor in a musical for his work as Tony in The Most Happy Fella. Tozzi worked extensively as an educator in professorships at Juilliard, Brigham Young University, and Indiana University. In 2006, he retired as Distinguished Professor of Voice at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington, Indiana. I had the good fortune to meet the charming Mr. Tozzi when my daughter was an undergraduate vocal student at the Jacobs School in 2001.

In addition to South Pacific, here's a few other of my favorite seasonal flicks guaranteed to get you through these dawg days of summer:

Much Ado About Nothing, Lawrence of Arabia, Out of Africa, My House in Umbria, Cinema Paradiso, Light in the Piazza, Summertime, Burnt by the Sun, Swimming Pool, A Room with a View, and The Bridges of Madison County.

ghostly voices

"Some Enchanted Evening' has been playing in my head ever since

the magnificent Bryn Terfel sang it at the Manor Ball, which got me

thinking about the movie South Pacific. Did you know that Rossano

Brazzi was actually dubbed by the dashing Giorgio Tozzi, a leading

bass for many years at the Metropolitan opera? I've always

wondered why Tozzi, himself, wasn't cast in the role of the

Frenchman, Emile de Becque.

.

I had the good fortune to meet the ever-so-charming Mr. Tozzi

when he was Professor of Voice at Indiana University's distinguished

Jacobs School of Music, when my daughter was an undergrad in the

program. (That's Tozzi, pictured above on the left, with Rossano

Brazzi. Personally, I think Mr. Tozzi is much more handsome.)

Speaking of dubbed voices, Marni Nixon is known as "The Ghostess

with the Mostess" since she dubbed some of the most famous female

musical film roles ever. Gosh, she's so beautiful, I'm thinking the

same thing. Why wasn't she cast in these fabulous roles, since she

did all the fabulous singing? (That's Nixon pictured above with

Deborah Kerr.) She had the uncanny ability to adapt her singing

voice to sound exactly like the actual actresses' speaking voices.

Some of the highlights of her career were providing Marilyn Monroe

with a few top notes in her performance of "Diamonds Are a Girl's

Best Friend" in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), the singing voice

for Deborah Kerr in the Rodgers & Hammerstein's The King and I

(1956), Deborah Kerr's singing voice again in An Affair to Remember
(1957), the singing voice for Natalie Wood in West Side Story (1961).

Nixon also sang some parts of the score of Anita by Rita Moreno.

In parts of the quintet setting of the song "Tonight", she sings both

Maria and Anita's lines, according to her autobiography. And one

more, she also did the singing voice for Audrey Hepburn as Eliza in

My Fair Lady (1964).

Nixon's many dubbing roles did not appear on the titles of any of the

films, and she did not begin to be fully credited or widely

acknowledged until the movies' subsequent release on VHS, decades

later. She has now, under her own name, recorded songs by Jerome

Kern, George Gershwin, Arnold Schönberg, Charles Ives, and Anton

Webern. The gorgeous Ms. Nixon is still singing today, by the way, at

the age of 78.