Background
Leonard Warren was born in New York City, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Sol Warenoff and Sara Kantor.
( Contemporaries of the modest and unassuming scientist J...)
Contemporaries of the modest and unassuming scientist Joseph Leidy (1823–91) revered him as the supreme consultant in questions relating to human anatomy, paleontology, protozoology, parasitology, anthropology, mineralogy, botany, and numerous other scientific fields. Leidy’s achievements and the breadth of his scientific interests and knowledge were astonishing. He seemed, in short, to be the man who knew everything. This is the first published biography of the remarkable Joseph Leidy―a leading American scientist of the mid-nineteenth century, the foremost human anatomist of his time, the first truly productive microscopist, the author of numerous groundbreaking scientific papers and books, and a devoted professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Swarthmore College. An unflagging pioneer and an exceptional illustrator, Leidy was the first in America to use the microscope as a tool in forensic medicine. He established the concept of parasitism in America. He was also the father of American protozoology and parasitology, describing for the first time Trichina in the pig, the source of the human disease trichinosis. As the founder of American vertebrate paleontology, he was the first to describe a dinosaur and many other extinct animals in America. Leonard Warren provides a full account of Leidy’s life and accomplishments and sets them in the social and historical context of Philadelphia and the United States in Leidy’s day. Warren also explores the reasons for the puzzling disparity between Leidy’s fame and recognition during his life and virtual anonymity a century after his death.
https://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Leidy-Last-Knew-Everything/dp/0300073593?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0300073593
Leonard Warren was born in New York City, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Sol Warenoff and Sara Kantor.
After graduating from Evander Childs High School, he worked for his father, a wholesale fur dealer. However, he found little satisfaction in the business world and within a few years, even though he had no prior musical training and received scant encouragement from his parents, he began studies with Will J. Stone at the Greenwich House Music School.
In 1935 Warren joined the Radio City Music Hall Glee Club at a salary of $35 a week and commenced intensive vocal study with Sidney Dietch. Three years later, on March 26, 1938, he was a cowinner in the nationwide Metropolitan Opera Auditions of the Air competition. A $5, 000 gift from George A. Martin, president of the Sherwin-Williams Company, which sponsored the auditions, enabled him to give up his job at the Music Hall for further musical study in Italy. In Milan he worked with Riccardo Picozzi and Giuseppe Pais. He also met Agatha Leifflen, a graduate of New York's Institute of Musical Art. Returning to New York in the fall of 1938, Warren performed for the first time at the Metropolitan Opera House in a Sunday evening concert on November 27. He made his official operatic debut on January 13, 1939, as Paolo in Verdi's Simon Boccanegra. During the next four years Warren was cast primarily in English, French, and German roles. It became increasingly apparent, however, that Italian opera was his forte, and he specialized in that repertory from the fall of 1943 on. As the scope and difficulty of his roles increased, Warren worked assiduously to overcome two handicaps, a complete lack of dramatic experience and an inability to learn new music quickly. Diligent observance of fellow performers and three years of private coaching with Giuseppe de Luca improved Warren's stage presence immensely. This, together with a detailed nine- to twelve-month preparation of each new role, resulted in such a complete mastery of a part that, according to Warren, not a "single tone, a single gesture" was delivered without total confidence. Consequently, by the late 1940's Warren had become one of the world's foremost Verdi baritones, enthusiastically acclaimed for his Amonasro, Count di Luna, and Iago, and especially for his moving portrayal of Rigoletto, a role he eventually sang eighty-eight times with the Metropolitan alone. In the 1950's Warren enjoyed a like success in other Verdi operas as well as in Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci and Puccini's Tosca. Although under annual contract to the Metropolitan Opera Company, for which he sang 633 performances (twenty-six roles) in twenty-two seasons, Warren appeared with the San Francisco Opera Company for seven seasons and with the Chicago Opera Company from 1944 through 1946. In addition, he performed at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires in 1942, 1943, and 1946 and at the Teatro Municipal in Rio de Janeiro during the summers of 1942-1945. He also sang at the Cincinnati Summer Opera in 1940; at Mexico City's Teatro Nacional in 1948; in Havana, Cuba, in June 1953; with the La Scala Opera, Milan, in December 1953; at Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre in 1958; and at operatic festivals in Canada and Puerto Rico. During his career Warren also sang on numerous radio shows and made frequent television appearances, including the first operatic concert ever televised, on Mar. 10, 1940. He concertized extensively throughout North America, appearing both in song recitals and with major symphony orchestras. In 1944 he sang several ballads in the motion picture When Irish Eyes Are Smiling. His artistry has been preserved on a number of RCA Victor records. These include nine operas and several single albums devoted to operatic highlights, sea chanties, and concert songs. At the peak of his career, Warren suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage and died onstage at the Metropolitan Opera House during a performance of Verdi's La Forza del Destino.
( Contemporaries of the modest and unassuming scientist J...)
A perfectionist, Warren constantly restudied and refined even his most renowned roles. No detail of makeup, costume, or staging escaped his critical scrutiny. As a result, he was frequently embroiled in temperamental confrontations with his co-workers because "he tells other singers how to sing, conductors how to conduct, directors how to direct . " (New York Times, October 25, 1959). Temperament notwithstanding, Warren was highly esteemed by musicians, critics, and the public. His voice was rich in timbre, poignantly expressive, and beautifully controlled from a low G upward through two and a third octaves to a thrilling B flat. Warren's ability to crescendo and decrescendo his upper notes was unmatched; his enunciation both in English and Italian, superb.
Warren was a stocky man, five feet, eleven inches tall and weighing 215 pounds. His hair and eyes were brown, his complexion dark.
He married Agatha Leifflen on December 27, 1941.