Versatile American Baritone of the Metropolitan Opera, reached his spectacular rise to fame following his winning of the Metropolitan Auditions of the Air in 1948. He became one of this company’s most popular singers. He appeared annually in coast-to-coast recital tours, on radio and television (Omnibus and The Voice of Firestone), and with the opera companies of San Francisco, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and Cincinnati. Outside the United States, he has toured extensively in Canada, Mexico, and South America, and his recordings for RCA Victor and Columbia Masterworks have carried his beautiful voice to all corners of the world.
While still at South Philadelphia High School, he won a scholarship to the Curtis Institute where he studied with Richard Bonnelli, a former baritone star of the Metropolitan of former years and also, Euphemie Gregory. At the time of his graduation from Curtis, he already had contracts for an appearance at La Scala in Milan, Italy under Toscanini, and for a full season with the Metropolitan Opera in New York