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.