Marguerite Piazza born 6 May 1920

Marguerite Piazza (May 6, 1920* – August 2, 2012) was an American soprano, entertainer and philanthropist from New Orleans, Louisiana.

Marguerite Piazza had a voice that could pack a concert hall and a figure that transfixed television audiences. She was sought out for ribbon cuttings and commercial endorsements and once performed as part of a Super Bowl halftime show.She was a pop star, in other words, just one among the ever-changing panoply that graces the glossies, except that she gained fame for singing opera.

Her life and career evoke an era when the gap between pop culture and high art was more easily bridged, when what audiences watched on television was similar in many ways to what they saw at the theatre or concert hall.

Marguerite Claire Luft was born in New Orleans. She attended fine arts programs at Loyola University and Louisiana State University, where she was a student of the baritone Pasquale Amato, before taking off to pursue her dream in New York, where her teacher suggested she adopt her mother’s maiden name, Piazza, because he thought an Italian-sounding name would boost her operatic credibility.

She joined the New York City Opera in 1944 as the youngest member of the company. Her first role at the City Center was Nedda in "Pagliacci," which was followed by "La bohème" (as Musetta), "Der Zigeunerbaron" and "Don Giovanni" (as Donna Elvira), among others. She made her first appearance with the New 

Orleans Opera Association in Martha (in 1945), followed by Hänsel und Gretel, as well as the title role in Il Segreto di Susanna. In 1950, Piazza made her Broadway debut, in Happy as Larry, with Burgess Meredith directing and starring in the title rôle, and Alexander Calder designing.

She began her career on radio, but moved into television in its earliest days, where both her good looks and her soaring soprano quickly made her a star. In the early 1950s she performed opera and other music on “Your Show of Shows,” the popular variety program which starred Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca.

Only after she had become a television success did she appear at the Metropolitan Opera, where in 1951 she had 14 performances as Rosalinde in “Die Fledermaus.” Then she traded ball gowns for cocktail dresses and joined the supper-club circuit, performing jazz and pop in spots including the Plaza in New York, the Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles and the Sands in Las Vegas. She also performed in the nightclubs of Havana before Fidel Castro came to power.

    Here's "You'll Never Walk Alone" from above 1959 album.

                             

Along the way she appeared in commercials. Before the dangers of cigarette smoking were made public a bejewelled Ms. Piazza said “I find Camels have a mildness that agrees with my throat.” in a 

Piazza & Presley

cigarette commercial in the 1950s. Bloomingdale’s once invited her
to be a celebrity chef for free cooking classes it offered at its New York location.

In 1968, she recovered from three operations on her face to remove cancerous growths, and in 1973 was treated for cervical and uterine cancer. She was honoured by then President Richard M. Nixon for her courage in fighting the disease. Despite her struggles with the illness, Piazza continued to perform throughout much of the 1970s. Piazza was one of the halftime performers at Super Bowl IV in New Orleans. She also produced and recorded "The Marguerite Piazza Christmas Sing-a-Long" during this time, which has remained a holiday season standard.

In 1975, Piazza began the Marguerite Piazza Gala for the benefit of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in partnership with her friend Danny Thomas. The gala proved to be a major success and continued annually under her name for 35 years. Ms. Piazza attended the gala every year and was a frequent performer, along with the likes of Nancy Wilson and The Fifth Dimension. Over the years, the Marguerite Piazza Gala helped to raise millions of dollars for the historic children's hospital, which may ultimately be her greatest legacy.

Heriazza's autobiography (co-authored with her daughter, Marguerite Bonnett), Pagliacci Has Nothing on Me!, was published in 2007. “She loved to sing for charities and volunteered occasionally to sing for prison inmates and also sang at the funeral of the woman who cleaned her house. She sang for whoever asked her,” Ms. Bonnett said.

Piazza  died of congestive heart failure on August 2, 2012 at her home in Memphis. She was 92. She was inducted into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame in 2016, becoming the first opera singer to be honoured by the organization.

(Edited from the New York Times, Memphis Music Hall of Fame & Wikipedia)

(* Piazza's year of birth had traditionally been given as 1926, but census records and genealogy sites later disproved that year.)