Rhadames in Aida, returning after his victory in Ethiopia, could not have had a more boisterous welcome. It seemed incredible. My immigrant father, Antonio Cocozza, was a wounded and incapacitated veteran of World War I, who captured the first German prisoners in the Argonne. My grandfather, Salvatore Lanza, still conducts a grocery and trucking business at Seventh and Christian streets, and it was over his store that I was born. It is the result of centuries of development.
Opera is in every Italian s blood.
I am told that in Italy around the opera houses there are push carts in the streets loaded with opera librettos just like peanut stands around a ball park in America. The enthusiasm for baseball in our country is mild compared with the Italian s love for opera. Scores of Italians with an irrepressible yen for producing opera have gone broke repeatedly. My father was a great opera enthusiast and had a large collection of records of his favorite singers. I heard these from the time I could first hear a clock tick.