For the last three years I have been immersed in opera for my forthcoming book, Two Against Hitler:  The Daring Mission to Save Europe’s Opera Stars from the Nazis. And among the most interesting characters I have come across is the legendary Italian-American basso Ezio Pinza.

Born in Rome in 1892, he rose from poverty to become one of the world’s biggest stars of both the stage and screen. But his life story is tinged with tabloid intrigue and tragedy, and could itself have been its own opera. Fortunato Ezio Pinza was his parents’ seventh child, but only the first to survive infancy.