HINES, Jerome (Albert Link) 1921-2003

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born November 8, 1921, in Hollywood, CA; died February 4, 2003, in New York, NY. Singer and author. Hines was a renowned operatic bass who performed in thirty-nine operas at the New York Metropolitan Opera House, as well as in productions around the world. He studied singing in private while attending the University of California, Los Angeles, where he earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry and math in 1943. After graduating, he worked briefly as a chemist, but his singing career began to take off after his 1941 appearance as Monterone in a production of Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto. His decision to change of the original spelling of his last name, Heinz, during World War II in order to avoid anti-German sentiments was perhaps not necessary given his wide popularity in opera. He sang for a variety of companies during the 1940s before joining the Met in 1946, where he appeared in such operas as Die Zauberflöte, Don Carlos, Aïda, and Boris Godunov. Later in his career, Hines founded the Opera-Music Theater Institute in New Jersey in 1987, which was created to train new opera singers and for which its founder also served as a singing coach. Though his stamina was somewhat weakened toward the end of his life, he continued to sing in his steady, commanding bass voice through 2001. His talents were rewarded with numerous prizes over his career, including a 1946 Caruso Award and several honorary doctoral degrees. Hines, who became a born-again Christian in 1954, also received awards for his charitable work. In addition to his singing career, he was the author of the 1968 autobiography This Is My Story, This Is My Song, an opera about Jesus titled I Am the Way (1969), a Christian play titled Tim Whosoever (1970), and the nonfiction books Great Singers on Great Singing (1982) and The Four Voices of Man (1997).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

books

Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Culture, Volume 1: American Culture after World War II, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1994.

Legends in Their Own Time, Prentice Hall (New York, NY), 1994.

periodicals

Chicago Tribune, February 6, 2003, section 3, p. 12.

Los Angeles Times, February 6, 2003, p. B14.

New York Times, February 5, 2003, p. A29.

Times (London, England), February 7, 2003.