Igor Gorin in Opera and Song
d- Tucson, AZ 24 MAR 1982
His name at birth was Ignatz Greenberg. His father, Shalom Greenberg, was a rabbi and a Talmudist who taught religion in Grodek and in all the neighboring provinces. Igor was not close to his father, but was to his mother, Yente Moritz Greenberg, who brought her love of music to her son. His childhood was spent in the Ukraine. He became a Russian refugee in the late 1920's and escaped to Vienna on forged papers. He studied music as well as medicine and entered the music conservatory there and graduated in 1930. His operatic debut was that year at the Volksoper. He studied at the Vienna Conservatory of Music, and then in Czechoslovakia before immigrating to the United States in 1930 and became a naturalized citizen in 1939. He became a popular radio singer as well as a high profile operatic stage singer. His Metropolitan Opera debut was as Germont pere in La Traviata on 10 FEB 1964. He sang as cantor at a synagogue in Providence, Rhode Island, and went on to perform in film, radio, on stage, on records and in early television. He sang Lindorf in the Central City production of The Tales of Hoffman in 1948. Gorin retired to Tucson with his wife, the former actress Mary Gorin, in 1965. He was invited by then-president of the University of Arizona, Richard Harvill, to begin a second career teaching at the University, which he did until his death 24 MAR 1982.
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