As a child I was always fond of the sound of the human singing voice. On my 16th birthday my parents gave me a record player, and I began collecting vocal records. Fortunately the proprietors of the local record store were opera lovers, and even though in 1941 imported records were unavailable, they had a number of Odeon and Parlaphone 78s available. I was introduced to the voices of Richard Tauber, Josef Schmidt, and Heinrich Schlusnus. At second-hand record stores I began collecting Caruso, Galli-Curci, Tetrazzini, McCormack, and Bastianini.

My first attendance at live opera performances was at the San Francisco Opera during its season in Los Angeles, where I grew up. Being a neophyte, I assumed I was hearing the operas as the composers wrote them. When I began collecting records by Helge Roswange. I was surprised to hear on his German-language recording of Alfredo’s “De’ miei bollenti spiriti” music that I never heard in performance. Still, I was able to see and hear great singers: Ezio Pinza, Licia Albanese, Risé Stevens, Dusolina Giannini, Leonard Warren, Salvatore Baccaloni, Lily Pons, and Bidu Sayão. Of course I began collecting recordings by those singers.

While an English major in college, I took some courses in the music department and met other opera lovers. During the 1948–49 season, the Metropolitan Opera toured in L. A., and I heard Manon with Ezio Pinza, Bidu Sayão, and Martial Singer. The tenor, yet unknown to me, was Giuseppe di Stefano. I immediately began collecting his recordings. While attending the San Francisco opera from 1947 to 1950 I was fortunate to hear such great singers as Jussi Björling, Giuseppe di Stefano, Ferruccio Tagliavini, Tito Gobbi, Renata Tebaldi, Ebe Stignani, and Mario Del Monaco.

After I moved to Oakland, where I met and married my wife of 54 years, William Collins and I, along with others, presented opera on KPFA radio in Berkeley, where we reviewed performances of the San Francisco Opera. They rewarded us with season standing-room passes. Eventually, I retired from business, went back to college, got a master’s degree, and taught English in a community college. Then, with William Collins and others, I formed Voce Records. We issued over 100 recordings. I reviewed the San Francisco Opera performances in the Sacramento newspaper for one year, and also wrote several articles for the International Dictionary of Opera.

In 1969 I made the acquaintance of the late great basso-buffo Paolo Montarsolo. We became close friends and he brought to our house several singers with whom we discussed opera: Pietro Bottazzo, Ugo Benelli, and José Carreras, who came several times along with Katia Ricciarelli. We also met Sesto Bruscantini, Giuseppe Taddei, and Michael Sénéchal. In Paris with Paolo we had dinner with José Lopez-Cobos and John Brecknock. After we issued on Voce the original version of Verdi’s Macbeth in which Rita Hunter sang the role of Lady Macbeth, she came to San Francisco and gave us tapes of her voice, which we issued on record. However, with the advent of CD and the European competition, I was forced to close Voce, and in 1993 began writing reviews for Fanfare.

My huge collection includes vocal recording, thousands of LPs, CDs, and now DVDs, with hundreds of complete opera recordings on reel-to-reel tape, cassette tape, and Beta and VHS video tapes. I own a large library of writing on vocal music and a complete collection of the issues of Opera magazine. I have been fortunate to meet and discuss vocal music with such critics as Andrew Porter and Michael Scott. The critic with whom I most agreed: the late Henry Pleasants.