Robert Merrill was born in New York on June 4, 1917. He mother was a concert singer, Lillian Miller Merrill, who gave him his first voice lessons. His first outside voice teacher was Samuel Margolis. He debuted as a popular singer on the radio, and debuted as an opera singer in Aida in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1944. He won the Metropolitan Opera Auditions of the air in New York, and made a debut with the Met on December 15, 1945, as Germont in La Traviata. He primarily stayed with the Metropolitan throughout his long career, and was regarded as a vigorous and very steady, if no...