Hines, Jerome Albert Link

(b. 8 November 1921 in Hollywood, California; d. 4 February 2003 in New York City), American-trained operatic bass whose singing career spanned six decades, composer, and author.

Born Jerome Heinz, Hines was the son of Russell Ray Heinz, a motion picture executive, and Mildred (Link) Heinz, a homemaker. Hines started piano lessons at age seven, but the gift of a chemistry set for his thirteenth birthday made him determined to become a chemist. He liked to sing but was dismissed from the Bancroft Junior High School glee club because, he said, “I couldn’t carry a tune.” To help Hines conquer his shyness, his mother enrolled him in singing lessons with Lucy McCullough. After several lessons McCullough refused to continue, urging Hines to find a teacher “who would do justice” to his voice. That teacher was Gennaro M. Curci, brother-in-law of the famed coloratura soprano Amelita Galli-Curci.

After attending Fairfax High School in Los Angeles, in 1937 Hines entered the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), majoring in chemistry and mathematics. He also continued his lessons with Curci. Hines’s first professional singing engagement was in April 1940, with the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera Association, playing Bill Bobstay in HMS Pinafore by Gilbert and Sullivan. The director of the Civic Light Opera suggested that Hines change his name, to avoid comparison with the Heinz of “pickle fame.” The name change may also have been motivated by a developing anti-German sentiment due to the war in Europe. Two months later Hines signed his first opera contract with the San Francisco Opera Company and in 1941 debuted as Monterone in Rigoletto by Guiseppe Verdi. His success led to engagements with the San Carlo Opera as Ramfis in Aida by Verdi and as a soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Hollywood Bowl orchestras.

Hines graduated from UCLA in June 1943 with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and math. Disqualified from military service because of his height—six feet, six and one-half inches—he joined the war effort as a chemist with the Union Oil Company in Los Angeles. While working, Hines took graduate courses in physics, continued voice lessons, and learned Italian and French. To improve his acting, he studied characterization with Vladimir Rosing. By age twenty Hines knew twenty operatic roles. Singing engagements consumed more of his time. In the spring of 1944 Hines appeared with the New Orleans Opera Company as Mephistopheles in Faust by Charles Gounod. By the end of the war Hines had resolved to become an opera singer and tour Europe to gain more experience. Offered the chance to audition for the Metropolitan Opera Company on 16 March 1946, he sang excerpts from Faust and from Boris Godunov by Modest Mussorgsky. The next day Hines received a contract. After moving to New York City, he studied voice with Rocco Pandiscio for two years, then switched to the famed vocal coach Samuel Margolis. On 21 November 1946 Hines made the first of his 868 performances at the Met, in the minor role of the sergeant in act two of Boris Godunov. Two weeks later he sang a leading role as Mephistopheles in Faust.

During his first year at the Met he sang two roles; in the second year eleven roles; by the end of his fourth year he was singing more than twenty roles. Hines was also a principal singer for other opera companies and festivals. The summer of 1951 he sang Faust for the Cincinnati Opera and met the lyric soprano Lucia Evangelista. Hines states in his autobiography that “it was love at second sight.” They were married 23 July 1952 and had four sons.

In the next few years Hines achieved several “firsts.” At the Met, on 18 February 1954, he was the first native-born American to sing Boris Godunov, described by many as the “greatest of all bass roles.” Hines received seven solo curtain calls from an enraptured audience.

Preparing for the part, he had asked a dozen psychiatrists and psychologists to analyze the character of Boris. His portrayal of Boris was a result of their findings. Hines’s article “The Three Faces of Boris Godunov,” in Musical America, describes the differing aspects of the character. Boris was his favorite role, and Hines sang seven different versions of the role in opera houses throughout the United States and Europe. His most memorable portrayal was in Moscow at the Bolshoi Theatre in 1962. Wearing the costume of the renowned Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin, Hines sang Boris in Russian, the first American to do so in that country, and earned a standing ovation from an audience that included Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

Hines was the first American-born bass to sing Philip II in Don Carlo by Verdi at the Met and at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Hines sang Wotan at Bayreuth in Germany and Nick Shadow at Glyndebourne in the United Kingdom. He sang title roles in Don Giovanni by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at the Munich Opera Festival and Mefistofele by Arrigo Boito in Buenos Aires, a role Hines described as an enormous challenge. Hines debuted at La Scala in 1958 in the title role of Hercules by George Frideric Handel. At the Met he held the record for performances of several roles, including fifty-five performances as Sarastro in The Magic Flute by Mozart and 104 as Ramfis in Aida. A favorite was playing the high-spirited Colline in La Bohème by Giacomo Puccini, which he sang sixty-four times. With forty-one consecutive years at the Met, Hines enjoyed the longest career of any principal singer in the company’s history. He portrayed forty-five characters in thirty-nine operas. His final performance at the Met was on 24 January 1987 as Sparafucile in Rigoletto. In 2001, at age seventy-nine, joking that “he was too young for the part,” he sang the Grand Inquisitor in Don Carlo, with the Boston Bel Canto Opera. This was his last operatic performance.

A born-again Christian, Hines composed the opera I Am the Way, about the life of Christ. It was performed in 1963 on the television series The Voice of Firestone, with Hines playing Christ, and in 1968 at the Met. Hines sang the title role ninety-three times at a number of venues, including the Bolshoi.

Throughout his singing career, Hines maintained his interest in chemistry. In his lab he invented a nontoxic special effects solution used on stage in Faust. Hines wrote articles on mathematics and music as well as three books: This Is My Story, This Is My Song (1968), his autobiography; Great Singers on Great Singing (1982), a collection of interviews; and The Four Voices of Man (1997), on vocal techniques. Hines died at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan; he is buried in Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Cemetery in Florence, New Jersey.

A mainstay for bass roles at the Met, Hines appeared at more than sixty other operatic venues and in 1500 recitals and orchestral concerts. The towering presence of this American-trained singer created a lasting impression on those fortunate enough to have seen him.

Hines’s autobiography is This Is My Story, This Is My Song (1968). For lengthy articles on Hines, see Frank Merkling, “Researcher,” Musical America 75 (15 Nov. 1955): 10+; Jerome Hines, “From Chemistry to Opera,” Music Journal 21 (Dec. 1963): 20–21; Barbara Fischer-Williams, “A Man Who Sings,” Opera News 45, no. 5 (1 Nov. 1980): 8–12; and Barrymore Laurence Scherer, “This Is My Song,” Opera News 56, no. 7 (21 Dec. 1991): 30–32. Obituaries are in the New York Times (5 Feb. 2003), the Boston Globe (6 Feb. 2003), and Opera News 67, no. 11 (May 2003).

Marcia B. Dinneen