Giuseppe Di Stefano (24 July 19213 March 2008) was an Italian operatic tenor who sang professionally from the mid-1940s until the early 1990s. Called Pippo by both fans and friends, he was known as the "Golden voice" or "The most beautiful voice", as the true successor of Beniamino Gigli. Luciano Pavarotti said he modeled himself after Di Stefano. In an interview Pavarotti said "Di Stefano is my idol. There is a solar voice...It was the most incredible, open voice you could hear. The musicality of Di Stefano is as natural and beautiful as the voice is phenomenal". Di Stefano was also the tenor who most inspired José Carreras. He died on 3 March 2008 as a result of injuries from an attack by unknown assailants. Early life and musical training Giuseppe Di Stefano was born in Motta Sant'Anastasia, a village near Catania, Sicily, in 1921. He moved to Milan with his parents when he was six. He was the only son of a carabiniere turned cobbler and his dressmaker wife. Di Stefano was educated at a Jesuit seminary and briefly contemplated entering the priesthood. When he was 16, he burst into song after losing a game of cards, and the friend with whom he was playing said he must get his voice trained. Two years later he began studying in earnest with the baritones Luigi Montesanto and Mariano Stabile, the latter impressing on the young tenor the importance of clear diction, advice he readily followed. World War Two interrupted Di Stefano's early career as he had to join the Italian army, where he often entertained the troops with his singing. He was considered such a bad soldier that his commanding officer decided that he would better serve his country by leaving the forces in order to sing. He performed under the pseudonym Nino Florio until Italy was defeated, when he fled to Switzerland. After a period of internment he was allowed to sing on Lausanne Radio, where he made the first of his recordings, disclosing a tenor voice of decided beauty and a singer with personality. He recorded many of his native Sicilian songs, records of which first brought him to the attention of discerning ears outside Italy in the late 1940s. Career He began his career as a lyric tenor, notable in roles such as Nemorino in Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore and Alfredo in Verdi's La Traviata. He made his