After retiring from the Metropolitan Opera in 1948, Pinza enjoyed a fresh career on Broadway in musical theatre, most notably in South Pacific, in which he created the role of Emile de Becque.

He studied singing at Bologna's Conservatorio Giovanni Battista Martini, making his operatic debut at age 22 in 1914, as Oroveso in Norma at Cremona.

"Although I did not know it at the time," he told an interviewer years later, "I was developing the lung power which now makes people hear my voice even in the top row of the peanut gallery.

Another of his eminent predecessors in the Italian operatic repertoire was the Spaniard José Mardones, who had appeared regularly with the Boston and Metropolitan opera companies between 1909 and 1926.

[citation needed] Pinza's Metropolitan Opera debut occurred in November 1926 in Spontini's La vestale, with famed American soprano Rosa Ponselle in the title role.

Apart from the Met, Pinza appeared at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 1930–1939, and was invited to sing at the Salzburg Festival in 1934–1937 by the celebrated German conductor Bruno Walter.

Pinza sang once again under the baton of Toscanini in 1935, this time with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, as the bass soloist in performances of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis.

In October 1947, he performed the role of Méphistophélès in Gounod's Faust opposite his daughter, soprano Claudia Pinza Bozzolla, as Marguerite at the San Francisco Opera.

He had sung opposite many celebrated singers at the Met during his heyday, including, among others, such international stars as Rosa Ponselle, Amelita Galli-Curci, Elisabeth Rethberg, Maria Jeritza, Giovanni Martinelli, Beniamino Gigli, Lawrence Tibbett, and Giuseppe De Luca.

In March 1942, the FBI arrested Pinza at his New York home and unjustly detained him along with hundreds of other Italian-Americans who were suspected of supporting the Axis during the second World War.

In April 1949, he appeared in Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific, originating the role of French planter Emile de Becque.

With his first wife, Augusta Cassinelli, he had a daughter, Claudia Pinza Bozzolla, who became a celebrated opera singer, vocal coach, and director herself.

[8] Pinza appeared in several films, beginning with 1947's Carnegie Hall, which featured a number of famous classical singers, musicians, conductors, and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

His final big-screen appearance was in the Twentieth Century-Fox film Tonight We Sing (1953), playing the famous Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin in a movie biography of impresario Sol Hurok.

A recording of Pinza singing "Anema e core" is heard in the film The Blues Brothers (1980), playing on a phonograph in the scene where Jake and Elwood visit landlady, Mrs. Tarantino.

These 78-rpm discs consist largely of individual operatic arias and some ensemble pieces (plus a complete Verdi Requiem conducted by Carlo Sabajno in 1927, and another with Tullio Serafin in 1939).