Igor Gorin

Gorin was born Ignatz Greenberg on October 26, 1904, in the small village of Grodek (today Horodok, Lviv Oblast) in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Igor was not close to his father; it was his beloved mother, Yente Moritz Greenberg, who passed on her love of music to her son.

Though the young man's scruffy and emaciated appearance was repellent, Fuchs would say of the audition years later, "I knew this boy had something, for he was so tenacious in his desire to sing."

He resolved that he wanted his voice to sound like Battistini's and made a concentrated effort to master the bel canto singing style.

It was not as an opera singer that Gorin made his first visit to the United States of America, but rather as a cantor in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1930 and 1931.

Upon returning to Austria, he became greatly disturbed at the reports of Nazi purges of the German-Jewish population and the growing popularity of Adolf Hitler, and in 1933 he emigrated to the U.S. permanently.

He also did a screen test for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and appeared in a secondary role in "Broadway Melody of 1938" singing "The Toreador Song" from Carmen and parts of "Largo al factotum" from The Barber of Seville.

He appeared with Boris Christoff in 1962 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in Alexander Borodin's Prince Igor, directed by Vladimir Rosing.

In 1963 Gorin sang with the New York City Opera, as Rigoletto, and Giorgio Germont in La traviata (opposite Beverly Sills).

For reasons of declining health, Igor Gorin retired from the concert stage and in 1966, he became a professor of music at the University of Arizona in Tucson.