Opera singer comes back to his Baltimore roots

Apr. 26--Mario Lanza didn't enjoy a long or critically beatified career, but the movie star tenor sure left a legacy of inspiration.

He has been mentioned as a prime influence on the early development of many singers, from pop crooner Al Martino to all of the famed Three Tenors.

Back in the early 1950s, a young Baltimore man found himself at a Lanza flick and was never quite the same.

"Something in my heart was beating," says Spiro Malas. "I was getting tears in my eyes and goose bumps."

The next day, he went to his father's restaurant at Baltimore and Gilmor streets.

"I told him I wanted to study singing," Malas says. "And in his thick Greek accent, my father said, 'What means study singing?' When I told him, he said, 'You study, I pay.'"

Money well spent.

Malas went on to enjoy a substantial career that included about two decades at the New York City Opera, starting in 1961, and nearly a decade at the Metropolitan Opera, starting in 1983. Not to mention appearances with other leading companies around the world.

Along the way, the bass-baritone starred on Broadway in musicals, too, earning a Drama Desk Award nomination for his leading role in a 1992 revival of The Most Happy Fella, and toured in his own one-man show, Spiro and Spirit Gum (lots of wig changes).

At 73, the New York-based Malas sounds like a most happy fella himself. He's back in his hometown to perform with the Baltimore Opera Company, which launched his professional career in 1959.

That was after he had been taking private voice lessons for a few years and was singing wherever he could get a break.

"My father paid for me to sing in Lake George [in upstate New York] with so-called professionals," Malas says. "I was feeling pretty good, singing 'Some Enchanted Evening," until a drunk came up to me one night and said, 'You might sing like Ezio Pinza, but you don't wear white socks with a dark suit.' How was I to know?"

Malas soon learned more about fashion and singing. When he heard that legendary soprano Rosa Ponselle, director of the Baltimore Opera, was holding auditions for Puccini's Gianni Schicchi, he tried out, even though he had never studied an opera role, let alone performed one.

"I sang one page for Rosa and got the part," he says. "I must have been more musical than I thought. I've learned 100 opera roles since."

That first role in 1959 was a small one - comprimario in opera-speak. In subsequent years, Malas sang more prominent roles in Baltimore, but for this return engagement, the tall, thickly built bass is taking on two comprimario assignments in another Puccini work, La Boheme - the put-upon old landlord Benoit and the suffering sugar daddy Alcindoro.

"I don't publicize doing those roles," Malas says in between rehearsals. "If you blink, you miss them. But it's very sweet of Michael [Harrison, Baltimore Opera's general director] to bring me down to do them."

These days, you're more likely to encounter Malas in a voice studio than an opera house - he has students at Columbia University and Manhattan School of Music, as well as the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.

His reputation as a teacher has had its unexpected results. "I got a phone call one day," Malas says. "'Beverly Sills gave me your number. I'm Bette Midler, a pop singer, and I'm having trouble with a couple of notes.' That was something. I loved how she thought I wouldn't know who she was."

For several years, Malas has enjoyed an extra career performing character roles on popular TV shows, including Law & Order and Sex and the City."He always plays someone with an accent, Greek or Italian, on those shows," says celebrated Baltimore-born bass-baritone James Morris, who isn't surprised that Malas crossed over into TV.

"We did a lot of operas together," Morris says, "and he always got really into the character. Yes, he's got a beautiful voice, but he's much more than a voice. He's a wonderful actor."

Albeit a sometimes hammy one.

"The last time I did Law & Order, I was overdoing it a bit," Malas says. "The director came over and said, 'Spiro, less coloratura.' That's all he had to say."

For the larger screen, Malas appeared in the 1998 film Finding North and he recently wrapped up work on Chapter 27, an indie film about the murder of John Lennon.

But Malas clearly still has his heart in opera.

"I love to hear new voices," he says. "I'm very excited about the new soprano they got for this Boheme when the original one had to cancel. Her name is Ermonela Jaho, and she is something."

Malas calls himself "a sound person. I love the sound of the voice," he says. "I don't care what they're singing."

He has enjoyed enviable, up-close encounters with some of the greatest operatic voices of recent times, starting with the woman who hired him for that first Baltimore gig.

"I heard Rosa sing at her home," Malas says, "and she still had a very good voice then. The incredible sound just killed me."

He soon heard some other sounds that floored him.

"I was very lucky," Malas says. "Nowadays, young singers have all these apprentice programs. I never had that. I had only done small parts at New York City Opera, things like Benoit" - here he imitates a geezer's high-pitched squawking - "when [conductor] Richard Bonynge heard me and asked me to sing in a performance of [Bellini's] I Puritani with his wife. That was in 1963 or '64."

Since the wife happened to be spectacular soprano Joan Sutherland, Malas was on a high. He was about to get higher. In 1965, Sutherland and Bonynge invited Malas to join them on a four-month tour of Australia. Once there, as rehearsals for Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore started, Malas first encountered a young, unknown Italian tenor.

"My wife and I were backstage and heard this sound," he says. "She got tears in her eyes. And that's when we met this character - Luciano Pavarotti. I saw that charisma of his immediately. He was an incredible study. He really taught me a lesson."

The two singers "were exactly the same size, 225 pounds" at the time, Malas says, and Pavarotti enjoyed borrowing clothes from him. Today, they're still close friends. They can be heard together, both in their prime, in prized recordings of L'elisir and another Donizetti charmer, Daughter of the Regiment, with Sutherland.

Returning to the New York City Opera after the Australian tour, Malas quickly added to his repertoire. Just one of the highlights with that company: singing Ptolemy in the now historic production of Handel's Julius Caesar that made Beverly Sills a sensation. (That effort, too, is preserved on disc.)

"Spiro worked up into major roles," says distinguished conductor Julius Rudel, who led the company for many years. "He was always a wonderful colleague. I'm most proud of him. And he's such a lovable bear."

As Malas honed his vocal skills, he continued to enjoy notable collaborations. One with Sutherland and brilliant mezzo Marilyn Horne yielded a classic recording of Rossini's Semiramide.

"It was an unbelievable era," Malas says.

When he joined the roster at the Metropolitan Opera ("I never had as good a success there as I should have," he says, sounding his only note of regret), he sang onstage with Horne and many other celebrated artists. Among them was superstar tenor Placido Domingo, in 1980s productions of Bizet's Carmen and Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann.

"I loved working with Spiro because he has the totality of colors in his performing palette," Domingo says by e-mail from London. "He is a singer of wonderful imagination and a real professional."

Not a bad summation for someone whose first voice teacher in Baltimore, Elsa Baklor, didn't offer a whole lot of encouragement. "I still remember her first words," Malas says. "'You have nothing to lose. Let's work hard.'"

He's still working, still loving every minute.

"It has been so fast, this life," he says. "It's unfair."

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