Enzo Stuarti, 86, Singer of Volume and Amore

Enzo Stuarti, who died Friday at 86, was an Italian tenor of the red-sauce and vino school who brought his soaring take on pop standards and opera to audiences in supper clubs across the land, as well as to Las Vegas and Atlantic City, where he was regularly featured.Known for his surplus of sentiment, Stuarti was also notorious for the preternatural volume he produced, which occasionally left critics holding their ears while audiences stood and cheered. He was so identified with old-fashioned Italian artistry that he became the spokesman for Ragu Spaghetti Sauce, and television viewers of the 1960s and 1970s became familiar with his tagline, “That’s-a nice-a sauce.”Stuarti also made regular appearances on the “Tonight Show,” and it was thanks to an appearance on “Toast of the Town” that the host, Ed Sullivan, suggested he change his stage name from Larry Stuart to the more Italian-sounding Enzo Stuarti.Stuarti came by his Italian heritage honestly, having been born Lorenzo Scapone in Rome. His father was a baker to Victor Emmanuel III, King of Italy, but resigned and left the country after Mussolini assumed absolute power in 1925. Stuarti’s parents settled in Newark, N.J., but young Enzo was left with an aunt, who sent him to be raised by monks at Monte Cassino Abbey. There he was trained in carpentry, gardening, and bricklaying. As a teenager, he rejoined his parents and learned English by attending the movies.After serving with the Merchant Marines during World War II, during which he survived the sinking of his Panama-registered freighter, Stuarti returned to Rome to study music at the St. Cecilia Conservatory. To support himself, he took a job as a test driver for Ferrari Racing Cars. The job soon became an obsession, and over the years Stuarti owned more than 700 cars, his son Larry Stuart said, many of them Ferrari racing models.Stuarti liked to claim that he got his first role on Broadway by accident, when he accompanied a friend to an audition for “Around the World,” Cole Porter’s version of the Jules Verne classic, directed by Orson Welles on Broadway in 1946. Welles insisted he audition, and Stuarti ended up with the role of Passepartout, Phineas Fogg’s resourceful manservant. Performing as Larry Laurence and Larry Stuart, Stuarti spent the 1950s appearing in a number of Broadway shows, including “Me and Juliet,” “South Pacific,” “As the Girls Go,”and several others, mainly in smaller roles. At one point, he was an understudy for Mario Lanza, and the two singers became lifelong friends.In 1961, in a classic show-business moment, he was the emergency replacement for Katyna Ranieri, a popular Italian singer who was booked into the Plaza Hotel’s elegant Persian Room. “Overnight, he became a star,” John Pagones wrote in the Washington Post in 1965, adding that Stuarti’s voice “is rich in bravura and overpowering in its fullness.”Other critics were less kind. “With the intensity and single mindedness of a Scot tossing the caber, he concentrated on volume to the exclusion of style,” William Rice wrote in the Post in 1966. “Now I know how the three little pigs felt, with the big, bad wolf out there blowing down houses,” a critic wrote for Los Angeles Times in 1973.”But the wolf didn’t have an echo chamber.”If not universally loved, Stuarti was certainly respected, and he had loyal followings around the country. He toured the country with Julius LaRosa in “Festa Italiano” and with Jerry Vale in “The Great Italian-American Music Festival.” In New York, he appeared at a legendary 1971 party for the “Italian-American Civil Rights League,” hosted by none other than a Brooklyn mob boss, Joseph Colombo. In 1983, he serenaded 2,074 couples at a mass marriage performed by the Reverend Sun Young Moon at Madison Square Garden. He considered his appearance at Carnegie Hall in 1964 to be the highlight of his career, his son said.Stuarti released about 30 recordings, including “Great Italian Love Songs,” “Bravo Stuarti,” and a tribute album to Lanza. He was also friends with Frank Sinatra, and treasured the memory of feting Old Blue Eyes with a lyrically transformed version of “Danny Boy” called “Frankie Boy.”He was a pious Catholic with an old-world style of bestowing largesse with lavish gestures, like slipping $100 to a waitress or valet. He pursued his love of sports cars with an intensity matched only by his piercing voice. But it was typical of his pious patriotism that, after he won a celebrity race at the Pocono International Race Track against Paul Newman and James Garner, he claimed his main memory was of singing the National Anthem beforehand.Enzo StuartiBorn Lorenzo Scapone on March 3, 1919, in Rome, Italy; died of heart failure December 16 at his home in Midland, Tex.; married twice, first to Esther Mesce, from whom he was divorced in 1972, and then to Thelma Donahoo, who survives him; he is also survived by his son, Larry Stuart, daughter, Andrea Leib, and three grandchildren.

Enzo Stuarti, 86, Singer of Volume and Amore

Enzo Stuarti, 86, Singer of Volume and Amore

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