Carl Princi: Grand Old Man of Opera Is Back

One of the most recognizable voices of local classical music radio returned to the air Sunday. Carl Princi is back, front man for his beloved opera in a new weekly show on KKGO (105.1 FM).

Princi, who put in a 33-year stint with the defunct classical radio station KFAC, launched his “Sunday Evening at the Opera” last weekend. The show featured the new “Tosca” recording, with Eva Marton and Jose Carreras conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas. Princi introduced the action of the opera and included an interview with Jan Peerce taped before the tenor’s stroke in 1982.

He also aired an Elisabeth Schwarzkopf group as a teaser for the show this weekend, which is based on Schwarzkopf’s “Rosenkavalier” recording.

In the four years that Princi, 70, has been off the air, he’s heard almost as marked a change in the commercial classical format as the transformation of KFAC into urban contemporary KKBT (92.3 FM).

“Classical radio in this city has gone heavier since the demise of KFAC,” Princi asserts. “I hear more chamber music on both those stations (KKGO and public radio KUSC) than I’ve ever heard before.”

Gone are the daily opera excerpt shows, the luncheon interviews, the frothy mix of musical comedy, operetta and jazz of the sort that KFAC featured during Princi’s tenure, the last 17 years as program director.

“There have been a lot of technological changes, and all for the better, and a lot of programming changes--not all for the better,” reflects Princi as he begins his 50th year in broadcasting.

Most of all Princi laments the passing of characterful announcers of the kind he personified. “Let announcers have a personality and not be anonymous voices,” he pleads earnestly. “I think a classical station, if it’s not careful in its programming, can be very, very boring. They (the audience) won’t be bored with the music--that music never bored anybody. But announcers have to enhance the experience.”

Princi’s new boss at KKGO, owner Saul Levine, ventures a mild contradiction. “I feel super personality detracts from the programming,” he says. “Not that we want our announcers to be insipid, but there is a trend in classical music programming to let the music speak for itself.”

This is most true weekdays during drive-time shifts and working hours, when shorter, almost exclusively instrumental music is offered. “The principal is that you try to match the mood of the listeners,” Levine says.

The result of this programming philosophy is that shows like Princi’s are slotted into evening and weekend times, when the audience is presumably able and willing to commit to serious listening.

Levine declines to say whether the super personality factor was an issue in the recent departure of Rich Capparela from the KKGO morning show. “I might say in our business generally, people come, people go,” Levine notes.

Capparela, for his part, attributes it to a combination of economic hard times as well as the move away from personality radio. “I didn’t leave radio, it left me,” Capparela says. He now operates his own audio production studio and is preparing pilots of weekly arts commentaries to pitch to TV news shows.

A passion for opera and dramatic personalities might not be surprising in a man who claims Italian as his first language, and who came into radio as a form of show business. Princi was first and incurably bitten by the performing bug when he was 14 years old. His brother was involved in a WPA Theater project, in which they needed a kid for a quick cameo.

“They literally dragged me to the theater,” Princi recalls. “I had to run across the stage in a loin cloth, while the cast pretended to stone me. But then they took me out for the bows, and when I heard the applause I was hooked.”

Acting remained a strong interest, and has brought Princi more than 40 bit parts in movies and television. But while at Boston University he took a course in broadcasting, which he completed in 1941, leading to a job at WESX, a small station in Salem, Mass.

His first radio job in the West was a part-time position at KWKW in Pasadena, where he did the English part of bilingual broadcasts in 1952-53. Following his interests, he auditioned for KFAC in 1953, where he was told there were no openings.

“The very next day, one of their announcers dropped dead in the hall,” Princi says, still reflecting astonishment. “I got his job.”

The ensuing years were hardly trouble-free, although Princi recalls them as the happiest years of his professional life.

“I’ll tell you, a classical music listener is the best. They treat you seriously, and either admire you or hate you,” Princi says. “We went through some rough times, with a lot of listener criticism. We took it to heart, though, and did something about it.”

The station changed ownership several times during Princi’s years. In September, 1989, new owner Evergreen Media Group dumped the classical format, eventually becoming KKBT.

Now entering its second year in a classical format, KKGO is endeavoring to fill the void. “We’re just absolutely delighted with the way its been going,” Levine says.

Princi is happy as well. “I like the idea of doing one show a week at this stage of my life,” he says. With a one-year contract with Levine to host the opera show, Princi says he’ll have a free hand in programming. “Neither one of us, however, is thinking of this as just a one-year thing,” Princi says.

Though constantly busy with the social whirl of charitable arts functions, he rejoices in his grandchildren and woodworking hobby and is at work on two books. One is on his family genealogy and the other is a compilation of the best of the 200-plus interviews he has taped.

“This will take a few years, but I’m not in any hurry,” he smiles broadly. “I’ve been off the air for four years, and I’ve not been forgotten. I’m very, very grateful for this.”