- published: 17 Oct 2007
- views: 110165
- author: jcyl141104
Vimeo results:
Youtube results:
Loading...
..." width="225" height="168" class="playvideo1 gotop" onClick="activateTab('playlist1'); return false" style="display: block;" />
Open Collage in a new Window
Email the Collage
- Loading...
Loading suggestions ...
- Aida
- Alban Berg
- Alberto Franchetti
- Aleko
- Aleko (Rachmaninoff)
- Alexander Borodin
- Amilcare Ponchielli
- Andrea Chénier
- Anton van Rooy
- Antonio Cotogni
- Antonio Pini-Corsi
- Antonio Scotti
- Antonio Superchi
- Antonio Tamburini
- Apollo Granforte
- Arthur Endreze
- Arturo Toscanini
- August Kindermann
- Barbershop music
- Baritone
- Bass (voice type)
- Bass-baritone
- Bayreuth
- Bayreuth Festival
- Bel canto
- Benjamin Britten
- Benvenuto Franci
- Billy Budd (opera)
- Bluegrass music
- Bolshoi Theatre
- Bryn Terfel
- C (musical note)
- Camille Everardi
- Camille Maurane
- Camille Saint-Saëns
- Capriccio (opera)
- Carlo Galeffi
- Carlo Morelli
- Carlo Tagliabue
- Carmen
- Castrato
- Cavalleria rusticana
- Cesare Formichi
- Charles Gilibert
- Charles Gounod
- Charles Panzéra
- Charles Santley
- Christian Gerhaher
- Clarence Whitehill
- Claude Debussy
- Contralto
- Così fan tutte
- Countertenor
- David Bispham
- Dennis Noble
- Der Freischütz
- Der Rosenkavalier
- Der Wildschütz
- Dinh Gilly
- Dmitri Hvorostovsky
- Don Carlos
- Don Giovanni
- Don Pasquale
- Enrico Delle Sedie
- Enrico Molinari
- Ernani
- Ettore Bastianini
- Eugenio Giraldoni
- Fach
- Facing Goya
- Falsetto
- Falstaff (opera)
- Faust (opera)
- Felice Varesi
- Ferdinando Paer
- Ferruccio Busoni
- Fidelio
- Four Tops
- Fra Diavolo (opera)
- Francesco Cilea
- Francesco Marconi
- Francesco Pandolfini
- Franchinus Gaffurius
- Francis Poulenc
- Francisco d'Andrade
- Frank Guarrera
- Franz Betz
- Franz Schubert
- François le Roux
- Friedenstag
- Friedrich Schorr
- Gabriel Soulacroix
- Gaetano Donizetti
- Georges Baklanoff
- Georges Bizet
- Geraint Evans
- Gerald Finley
- Gerhard Hüsch
- Giacomo Meyerbeer
- Giacomo Puccini
- Giangiacomo Guelfi
- Gilbert and Sullivan
- Gino Bechi
- Gioachino Rossini
- Giorgio Ronconi
- Giorgio Zancanaro
- Giovanni Inghilleri
- Giuseppe Campanari
- Giuseppe Danise
- Giuseppe De Luca
- Giuseppe Del Puente
- Giuseppe Taddei
- Giuseppe Valdengo
- Giuseppe Verdi
- Gloriana
- Gérard Souzay
- H.M.S. Pinafore
- Hamlet (opera)
- Hans Heiling
- Hans Hermann Nissen
- Hans Hotter
- Hans Sachs
- Hector Berlioz
- Hector Dufranne
- Heinrich Schlusnus
- Henry Albers
- Herbert Janssen
- Hermann Prey
- Hermann Uhde
- Hermann Weil
- Hérodiade
- I puritani
- Il pirata
- Il trovatore
- Il turco in Italia
- Ingvar Wixell
- Iolanthe
- J. B. Steane
- Jacques Jansen
- Jacques Offenbach
- James Westman
- Jean Noté
- Jean Périer
- Jean-Baptiste Faure
- Jean-Baptiste Lully
- Jean-Blaise Martin
- Joachim Tartakov
- Johann Michael Vogl
- John Charles Thomas
- John Forsell
- Joseph Schwarz
- Josip Kašman
- José van Dam
- Juan Pons
- Jules Massenet
- Karl Schmidt-Walter
- L'Africaine
- L'elisir d'amore
- L'heure espagnole
- L'Orfeo
- La bohème
- La Cenerentola
- La favorite
- La forza del destino
- La Gioconda (opera)
- La Juive
- La Scala
- La traviata
- Lawrence Tibbett
- Le comte Ory
- Leo Nucci
- Leo Schützendorf
- Leonard Warren
- Leone Giraldoni
- Leopold Demuth
- Les Huguenots
- Les Troyens
- Levi Stubbs
- Lohengrin (opera)
- Lucia di Lammermoor
- Luigi Montesanto
- Léon Melchissédec
- Macbeth (opera)
- Madama Butterfly
- Manon
- Maria Callas
- Maria Stuarda
- Mariano Stabile
- Mario Ancona
- Mario Basiola
- Mario Sammarco
- Matthias Goerne
- Mattia Battistini
- Maurice Renaud
- Mazeppa (opera)
- Merriam-Webster
- Metropolitan Opera
- Mezzo-soprano
- Nabucco
- Nathan Gunn
- Nicolae Herlea
- Norma (opera)
- Oberon (opera)
- Olaf Bär
- Opera seria
- Operetta
- Oskar Kamionsky
- Otello
- Pagliacci
- Paolo Silveri
- Paris Opera
- Parsifal
- Pasquale Amato
- Passaggio
- Patience (opera)
- Paul Barroilhet
- Paul Hindemith
- Paul Lhérie
- Pavel Lisitsian
- Perfect fifth
- Peter Kajlinger
- Phonograph
- Piero Cappuccilli
- Pierre Bernac
- Pietro Mascagni
- Polyphony
- Prince Igor
- Religious music
- Renato Bruson
- Renato Zanelli
- Riccardo Stracciari
- Richard Bonelli
- Richard Strauss
- Richard Wagner
- Rigoletto
- Robert Merrill
- Robert Weede
- Roberto Devereux
- Roméo et Juliette
- Royal Opera House
- Ruddigore
- Rudolf Bockelmann
- Ruggero Leoncavallo
- Salome (opera)
- Sergei Leiferkus
- Seymour Schwartzman
- Sherrill Milnes
- Siegfried (opera)
- Simon Boccanegra
- Simon Keenlyside
- Soprano
- Soul music
- Soviet Union
- Squillo
- Stanley Sadie
- Stephan Genz
- Tannhäuser (opera)
- Tenor
- Tessitura
- Thaïs (opera)
- The Bartered Bride
- The Golden Cockerel
- The Grand Duke
- The Immortal Hour
- The Magic Flute
- The Merry Widow
- The Mikado
- The Oprichnik
- The Sorcerer
- Theodor Reichmann
- Thomas Quasthoff
- Timbre
- Tito Gobbi
- Titta Ruffo
- Tom Jones (singer)
- Tom Krause
- Tosca
- Tristan und Isolde
- Umberto Giordano
- Umberto Urbano
- Un ballo in maschera
- Verismo
- Victor Maurel
- Vincenzo Bellini
- Vladimir Chernov
- Vocal range
- Vocal weight
- Voice type
- Waclaw Brzezinski
- Wakonda's Dream
- Werther
- Wikisource
- William Tell (opera)
- Wolfgang Holzmair
- World War I
- Wozzeck
-
Bayreuth Festival
The Bayreuth Festival (German: Bayreuther Festspiele) is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of operas by the 19th century German composer Richard Wagner are presented. Wagner himself conceived of and promoted the idea of a special festival to showcase his own works, in particular his monumental cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen and Parsifal.
Performances take place in a specially designed theatre, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. Wagner personally supervised the design and construction of the theatre, which contained many architectural innovations to accommodate the huge orchestras for which Wagner wrote as well as the composer's particular vision about the staging of his works. The Festival has become a pilgrimage destination for Wagner enthusiasts, who often must wait years to obtain tickets.
The origins of the Festival itself lie rooted in Richard Wagner's interest in establishing his financial independence. A souring of the relationship with his patron, Ludwig II of Bavaria, led to his expulsion from Munich, where he had originally intended to launch the festival. Wagner next considered Nuremberg, which would have reinforced the thematic significance of works such as Die Meistersinger. On the advice of Hans Richter, however, the focus fell upon Bayreuth which enjoyed three distinct advantages.
wn.com/Bayreuth_Festival -
Bolshoi Theatre
Coordinates: 55°45′37″N 37°37′07″E / 55.76028°N 37.61861°E / 55.76028; 37.61861
The Bolshoi Theatre (Russian: Большо́й теа́тр, tr. Bol'shoy Teatr; IPA: [bɐlʲˈʂoj tʲɪˈatr], meaning Large, Great or Grand Theatre, also spelled Bolshoy) is a historic theatre in Moscow, Russia, designed by architect Joseph Bové, which holds performances of ballet and opera. The Bolshoi Ballet and Bolshoi Opera are amongst the oldest and most renowned ballet and opera companies in the world. The theatre is the parent company of The Bolshoi Ballet Academy, a world-leading school of ballet.
The main building of the theatre, rebuilt and renovated several times during its history, is a landmark of Moscow and Russia (its iconic neoclassical facade is depicted on the Russian 100-ruble banknote). On 28 October 2011, the Bolshoi was re-opened after an extensive six year renovation costing about 21 billion rubles (about $680 million). The renovation included restoring acoustics to the original quality (which had been lost during the Soviet Era), as well as restoring the original Imperial decor of the Bolshoi.
wn.com/Bolshoi_Theatre -
La Scala
La Scala (Italian: Teatro alla Scala), is a world renowned opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the New Royal-Ducal Theatre at La Scala (Italian: Nuovo Regio Ducale Teatro alla Scala). The premiere performance was Antonio Salieri's Europa riconosciuta.
Most of Italy's greatest operatic artists, and many of the finest singers from around the world, have appeared at La Scala during the past 200 years. Today, the theatre is still recognised as one of the leading opera and ballet theatres in the world and is home to the La Scala Theatre Chorus, La Scala Theatre Ballet and La Scala Theatre Orchestra. The theatre also has an associate school, known as the La Scala Theatre Academy (Italian: Accademia Teatro alla Scala), which offers professional training in music, dance, stage craft and stage management.
La Scala's season traditionally opens on 7 December, Saint Ambrose's Day, the feast day of Milan's patron saint. All performances must end before midnight, and long operas start earlier in the evening when necessary.
wn.com/La_Scala -
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The Royal Ballet, and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. Originally called the Theatre Royal, it served primarily as a playhouse for the first hundred years of its history. In 1734, the first ballet was presented. A year later, Handel's first season of operas began. Many of his operas and oratorios were specifically written for Covent Garden and had their premieres there.
The current building is the third theatre on the site following disastrous fires in 1808 and 1857. The façade, foyer, and auditorium date from 1858, but almost every other element of the present complex dates from an extensive reconstruction in the 1990s. The Royal Opera House seats 2,256 people and consists of four tiers of boxes and balconies and the amphitheatre gallery. The proscenium is 12.20 m wide and 14.80 m high. The main auditorium is a Grade 1 listed building.
wn.com/Royal_Opera_House -
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union (Russian: Советский Союз, tr. Sovetsky Soyuz), officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR; Russian: Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик, tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik; IPA: [sɐˈjus sɐˈvʲetskʲɪx sətsɨəlʲɪˈstʲitɕɪskʲɪx rʲɪsˈpublʲɪk] (
listen); abbreviated СССР, SSSR), was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991.
The Soviet Union was a single-party state ruled by the Communist Party from its foundation until 1990. A union of 15 subnational Soviet republics, the Soviet state was structured under a highly centralized government and economy.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 caused the downfall of the Russian Empire. Following the Russian Revolution, there was a struggle for power between the Bolshevik party, led by Vladimir Lenin, and the anti-communist White movement. In December 1922, the Bolsheviks won the civil war, and the Soviet Union was formed with the merger of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.
wn.com/Soviet_Union
-
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg (February 9, 1885 – December 24, 1935) was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.
Berg was born in Vienna, the third of four children of Johanna and Conrad Berg. His family lived comfortably until the death of his father in 1900.
He was more interested in literature than music as a child and did not begin to compose until he was fifteen, when he started to teach himself music. In late February or early March 1902 he fathered a child with Marie Scheuchl, a servant girl in the Berg family household. His daughter, Albine, was born on December 4, 1902.
Berg had little formal music education before he became a student of Arnold Schoenberg in October 1904. With Schoenberg he studied counterpoint, music theory, and harmony. By 1906, he was studying music full-time; by 1907, he began composition lessons. His student compositions included five drafts for piano sonatas. He also wrote songs, including his Seven Early Songs (Sieben Frühe Lieder), three of which were Berg's first publicly performed work in a concert that featured the music of Schoenberg's pupils in Vienna that year. The early sonata sketches eventually culminated in Berg's Piano Sonata, Op. 1 (1907–1908); it is one of the most formidable "first" works ever written.
wn.com/Alban_Berg -
Alberto Franchetti
Alberto Franchetti (18 September 1860 – 4 August 1942) was an Italian opera composer.
Alberto Franchetti was born in Turin, a Jewish nobleman of independent means. He studied first in Venice, then in Dresden under Felix Draeseke, and finally at the Munich Conservatory under Josef Rheinberger. His first major success occurred in 1888 with his opera Asrael. His operatic style combined Wagnerianism and the traits of Meyerbeer with Italian verismo. During his life, critics sometimes referred to him as the "Meyerbeer of modern Italy."
The words of music critic G. B. Nappi sum up Franchetti's primary talents: "His character is perhaps unsuitable for passionate dramas, but rather for those subjects, where the fantastic, romantic and epic are required in the symphonic texture and large choral pictures. In this regard Alberto Franchetti knows that he has no rival" (from "Orfeo" 6.3, 1915).
Grove considers Cristoforo Colombo (1892) Franchetti's best work. However, his most popular opera was Germania (1902; libretto by Luigi Illica). It clung to the general operatic repertoire until the First World War; it was performed worldwide, and Arturo Toscanini (who conducted the work at La Scala) and Enrico Caruso held it high regard. Caruso included a few of the arias in his very first commercial recording session in 1902 and repeated one piece the following year for the Zonophone company, and two pieces with orchestra in 1910 when he appeared in a revival of the work in New York. But by the war, Germania had lapsed into obscurity. Mosco Carner notes that Illica's libretto of Tosca, or at least the sketch for a libretto, was first offered to Franchetti, who, too busy with other projects at the time, passed it on to his friend Puccini.
wn.com/Alberto_Franchetti -
Alexander Borodin
Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin (12 November 1833 – 27 February 1887) was a Russian Romantic composer and chemist of Georgian–Russian parentage. He was a member of the group of composers called The Five (or "The Mighty Handful"), who were dedicated to producing a specifically Russian kind of art music. He is best known for his symphonies, his two string quartets, and his opera Prince Igor. Music from Prince Igor and his string quartets was later adapted for the US musical Kismet.
Borodin was born in Saint Petersburg, the illegitimate son of a Georgian noble, Luka Gedevanishvili (Georgian: ლუკა სიმონის ძე გედევანიშვილი) and a 24-year-old Russian woman, Evdokia Konstantinovna Antonova (Евдокия Константиновна Антонова). The nobleman had him registered as the son of one of his serfs, Porfiry Borodin. As a boy he received a good education, including piano lessons. He entered the Medico–Surgical Academy in 1850, which was later home to Ivan Pavlov, and pursued a career in chemistry. On graduation he spent a year as surgeon in a military hospital, followed by three years of advanced scientific study in western Europe.
wn.com/Alexander_Borodin -
Amilcare Ponchielli
Amilcare Ponchielli (Italian pronunciation: [aˈmilkare ponˈkjɛlli], August 31, 1834 – January 16, 1886) was an Italian composer, mainly of operas.
Born in Paderno Fasolaro, now Paderno Ponchielli, near Cremona, Ponchielli won a scholarship at the age of nine to study music at the Milan Conservatory, writing his first symphony by the time he was ten years old.
Two years after leaving the conservatory he wrote his first opera -- it was based on Alessandro Manzoni's great novel The Betrothed (I promessi sposi) -- and it was as an opera composer that he eventually found fame.
His early career was disappointing. Maneuvered out of a professorship is very good at the Milan Conservatory that he had won in a competition, he took small-time jobs in small cities, and composed several operas, none successful at first. In spite of his disappointment, he gained much experience as the bandmaster (capobanda) in Piacenza and Cremona, arranging and composing over 200 works for wind band. Notable among his "original" compositions for band are the first-ever concerto for euphonium (Concerto per Flicornobasso, 1872), fifteen variations on the Neapolitan song "Carnevale di Venezia", and a series of festive and funeral marches that resound with the pride of the newly unified Italy and the private grief of his fellow Cremonese. The turning point was the big success of the revised version of I promessi sposi in 1872, which brought him a contract with the music publisher G. Ricordi & Co. and the musical establishment at the Conservatory and at La Scala. The ballet Le due gemelle (1873) confirmed his success.
wn.com/Amilcare_Ponchielli -
Antonio Cotogni
Antonio Cotogni (August 1, 1831, Rome - October 15, 1918, Rome) was an Italian baritone of the first magnitude. Regarded internationally as being one of the greatest male opera singers of the 19th century, he was particularly admired by the composer Giuseppe Verdi. Cotogni forged an important second career as a singing teacher after his retirement from the stage in 1898.
A native of Rome, Cotogni was of humble origins. He studied first at the Hospice of San Michele, and afterwards under Faldi, Capocci, Mustafà and Aldega, gaining his first success in the Oratory of the Filippini in the Chiesa Nuova. He also studied with Fontemaggi. He made his debut at Rome's Teatro Metastasio, as Belcore in L'elisir d'amore, in 1852. He sang successfully on the Italian operatic circuit before reaching La Scala, Milan, in 1860. During the ensuing decades, he also appeared at the leading opera houses in Madrid, Lisbon, Paris, London, Moscow and St Petersburg. He became enormously popular with London audiences, performing at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, from 1867 to 1889. He sang at St Petersburg in 26 successive seasons.
wn.com/Antonio_Cotogni -
Antonio Pini-Corsi
Antonio Pini-Corsi (born June [?] 1858 or 1859, Zara, later known as Zadar — died April 21, 1918, Milan) was an Italian operatic baritone of international renown. He possessed a ripe-toned voice of great flexibility and displayed tremendous skill at patter singing. Pini-Corsi participated in numerous operatic premieres, creating such roles on stage as Ford in Giuseppe Verdi's Falstaff and Schaunard in Giacomo Puccini's La bohème. Part of the first generation of recorded musicians, Pini-Corsi was one of the finest buffo singers of his era.
Pini-Corsi was born into a musical family in what is now Croatia. (Many of his relatives sang professionally, most notably his brother Gaetano, who was a successful operatic tenor.)
He made his professional opera debut in Cremona in 1878 as Dandini in La Cenerentola. Pini-Corsi subsequently appeared in opera houses throughout Italy for the next 15 years, specializing in the comic operas of Rossini and Donizetti. He made his La Scala debut in 1892 as Don Rolando Ximenes in the first performance of the revised version of Alberto Franchetti's Cristoforo Colombo.
wn.com/Antonio_Pini-Corsi -
Antonio Scotti
Antonio Scotti (January 25, 1866 – February 26, 1936) was an Italian baritone. He was a principal artist of the New York Metropolitan Opera for more than 33 seasons, but also sang with great success at London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and Milan's La Scala.
Antonio Scotti was born in Naples, Italy. His family wanted him to enter the priesthood but he emarbarked instead on a career in opera. He received his early vocal training from Esther Trifari-Paganini and Vincenzo Lombardi. According to most sources, he made his debut at Malta's Theatre Royal in 1889, performing the role of Amonasro in Giuseppe Verdi's Aida. Engagements at various Italian operatic venues ensued and he later gained valuable stage experience singing in Spain, Portugal, Russia and South America.
In 1898, he debuted at Italy's most renowned opera house, La Scala, Milan, as Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger. This now seems a surprising choice of role for Scotti because his subsequent career did not encompass the operas of Richard Wagner.
wn.com/Antonio_Scotti -
Antonio Tamburini
Antonio Tamburini (March 28, 1800 – November 8, 1876) was an Italian operatic baritone.
Born in Faenza, then part of the Papal States, Tamburini studied the orchestral horn with his father and voice with Aldobrando Rossi, before making his debut as a singer, aged 18, in La contessa di colle erbose (Pietro Generali). He went on to become one of the finest baritones of his age. He had a beautiful, smooth and flexible voice the quality of which is indicated by the bel canto music written for him. He was renowned also for his good looks and impressive stage presence, often working with the tenor Giovanni Battista Rubini and soprano Giulia Grisi.
Tamburini is famous for his association with the operatic compositions of Bellini such as I Puritani. Indeed, he was one of the so-called "Puritani Quartet" of leading international singers, along with Grisi, Rubini and the bass Luigi Lablache. The quartet was reunited on stage, albeit with Giovanni Mario replacing Rubini, in 1843 at the premiere of Donizetti's Don Pasquale.
wn.com/Antonio_Tamburini -
Apollo Granforte
Apollo Granforte (July 20, 1886, Legnago - June 11, 1975, Milan) was an Italian opera singer and one of the leading baritones active during the inter-war period of the 20th century.
Granforte emigrated as a young man to Argentina, where he studied voice with Guido Capocci in Buenos Aires. He made his stage debut in Rosario, as Germont, in 1913.
After returning to Italy, he sang at the Rome Opera before making his debut at La Scala in Milan, as Amfortas, in 1921. In 1924, he went to Australia on a successful tour with Nellie Melba. During Granforte's subsequent tour of Australia in J. C. Williamson's 1932 Grand Opera season, Frank Thring senior's Melbourne-based Efftee Productions filmed him with the Williamson-Imperial Grand Opera Company in selections from Rossini's The Barber of Seville. This relatively brief footage was released on VHS in 1989 by the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.
Granforte possessed a big, rich, vibrant voice and he quickly established himself in the great baritone roles of Verdi and the verismo composers. He sang some Wagner, too, and also took part in the creation of Nerone by Mascagni in 1935.
wn.com/Apollo_Granforte -
Arturo Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini (Italian pronunciation: [arˈtuːro toskaˈniːni]; March 25, 1867 – January 16, 1957) was an Italian conductor. One of the most acclaimed musicians of the late 19th and 20th century, he was renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his photographic memory. As music director of the NBC Symphony Orchestra he became a household name (especially in the United States) through his radio and television broadcasts and many recordings of the operatic and symphonic repertoire.
Toscanini was born in Parma, Emilia-Romagna, and won a scholarship to the local music conservatory, where he studied the cello. He joined the orchestra of an opera company, with which he toured South America in 1886. While presenting Aida in Rio de Janeiro, Leopoldo Miguez, the locally hired conductor, reached the summit of a two-month escalating conflict with the performers due to his rather poor command of the work, to the point that the singers went on strike and forced the company's general manager to seek a substitute conductor. Carlo Superti and Aristide Venturi tried unsuccessfully to finish the work. In desperation, the singers suggested the name of their assistant Chorus Master, who knew the whole opera from memory. Although he had no conducting experience, Toscanini was eventually convinced by the musicians to take up the baton at 9:15 P.M., and led a performance of the two-and-a-half hour opera. The public was taken by surprise, at first by the youth and sheer aplomb of this unknown conductor, then by his solid mastery. The result was astounding acclaim. For the rest of that season Toscanini conducted eighteen operas, all with absolute success. Thus began his career as a conductor, at age 19.
wn.com/Arturo_Toscanini -
August Kindermann
August Kindermann (6 February 1817, Potsdam – 6 March 1891, Munich) was a German bass-baritone singer and regisseur, particularly noted for his performances in the operas of Richard Wagner. He began his career singing in the chorus of the Berlin State Opera in 1836 and made his solo debut there in 1837 in a small role in Spontini's Agnes von Hohenstaufen. He went on to sing bass and baritone roles with Leipzig Opera from 1839 to 1846. While at Leipzig he became a friend of Albert Lortzing and sang in the premieres of two of his operas: the title role in Hans Sachs (1840) and Count von Eberbach in Der Wildschütz (1842). He also sang Gazna in the premiere of Robert Schumann's secular oratorio Das Paradies und die Peri (1843). In 1846 Kinderman moved to the Bavarian State Opera in Munich where he was a Kammersänger and stage director who enjoyed great popularity. In 1855 he directed the company's production of Wagner's Tannhäuser as well as singing the role of Wolfram. During his time in Munich he sang the role of Wotan in the premieres of both Das Rheingold (1869) and Die Walküre (1870) as well as Titurel in the premiere of Parsifal (1882). In addition to the Wagner premieres, Kindermann also sang Count Eckart in the premiere of Josef Rheinberger's opera Die sieben Raben (1869). August Kinderman's daughters, Franziska Kindermann, Hedwig Reicher-Kindermann and Marie Kindermann also became opera singers.
wn.com/August_Kindermann -
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten,OM CH (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist; and one of the central figures of 20th century British classical music. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to international fame. For the next fifteen years he devoted much of his compositional attention to writing operas, establishing him as one of the leading 20th century figures in this genre.
Britten's interests as a composer were wide-ranging; he produced important music in such varied genres as orchestral, choral, solo vocal (much of it written for his life partner, tenor Peter Pears), chamber and instrumental, as well as film music. He also took a great interest in writing music for children and amateur performers, and was an outstanding pianist and conductor.
Britten was born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, on 22 November 1913, the youngest of four children. His father, Robert, was a dentist, and his mother Edith, a talented amateur musician who gave Britten his first lessons in piano and notation. He showed musical gifts very early in life, making his first attempts at composition aged five, and thereafter composing prolifically as a child. He started piano lessons with a teacher from his pre-prep school when aged 7, and viola lessons with Audrey Alston when 10 years old.
wn.com/Benjamin_Britten -
Bryn Terfel
Bryn Terfel Jones CBE (Welsh pronunciation: [ˈbrɨn ˈtɛrvɛl]; born 9 November 1965) is a Welsh bass-baritone opera and concert singer. Terfel was initially associated with the roles of Mozart, particularly Figaro and Leporello, but has subsequently shifted his attention to heavier roles, especially those by Wagner.
Bryn Terfel Jones was born in Pant Glas, North Wales, the son of a farmer. His first language is Welsh. He knew of another Welsh baritone named Bryn Jones, so chose Bryn Terfel as his professional name. He had an interest in and talent for music from a very young age. A family friend taught him how to sing, starting with traditional Welsh songs. After winning numerous competitions for his singing, he moved to London in 1984 and entered the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where he studied under Rudolf Piernay. (He has recorded that he initially applied to the music college in Cardiff but when the reply was addressed to ‘Miss Terfel’ he was so annoyed a Welsh College did not know Bryn was a man's name that he switched to London.) He graduated in 1989, winning both the Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Award and the Gold Medal. The same year he came second behind Dmitri Hvorostovsky in the Cardiff BBC Singer of the World Competition, but won the Lieder Prize.
wn.com/Bryn_Terfel -
Camille Everardi
Camille Everardi (1824 – 1899) was a Belgian operatic baritone who had an active international career during the 1850s through the 1870s. He particularly excelled in the works of Vincenzo Bellini and Gioachino Rossini. Several music critics of his day likened his voice to that of Antonio Tamburini. He later had a highly successful second career as a voice teacher in the Russian Empire.
Born to parents of Italian descent, he studied at the Royal Conservatory of Liège in Liège and under Manuel García in Paris. He made his professional opera debut at the Teatro Nuovo in Naples in 1850 where he sang for two seasons. He sang at the Teatro Canobbiano in Milan in 1852 and in 1853 he made his first appearance at La Scala as Francesco in Verdi's I masnadieri. From 1853 to 1854 he was engaged at the Teatro Regio di Torino.
In 1855 Everardi returned to Paris to join the roster of principal singers at the Théâtre-Italien. He sang there for two seasons in such roles as Aliprando in Rossini's Matilde di Shabran and the title role in Mozart's Don Giovanni. In 1860 he was engaged at the Royal Opera, London where he portrayed Comte de Nevers in Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots, Elmiro in Rossini's Otello , Alphonse in Donizetti's La favorite, and Count Robinson in Cimarosa's Il matrimonio segreto. He also made several appearances at opera houses in Germany.
wn.com/Camille_Everardi -
Camille Maurane
Camille Maurane (November 29, 1911 – January 21, 2010), born Camille Moreau, was a French baritone singer. His father was a music teacher and he started singing as a child in the Maîtrise Saint-Evode in Rouen. The sudden death of his mother and family upheaval meant a break of twelve years in regular singing.
He studied at the Paris Conservatoire in the class of Claire Croiza from 1936 to 1939. He began his professional career as a singer in 1940 at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. After his debut as the Moine musicien in Le Jongleur de Notre-Dame on 14 January 1940, he went to create the following roles at the Opéra-Comique:
He also sang in The Barber of Seville, La Basoche, Carmen, Lakmé, Louise, Madame Bovary, Madame Butterfly, Werther and Pelléas et Mélisande. He was occasionally billed under the name Moreau.
His voice was typical of the baryton-martin range (between baritone and tenor). He is famous for his interpretation of Debussy's Pelléas, for which he took part in three complete recordings of Pelléas et Mélisande. He is also regarded as one of the best interpreters of French mélodies, of which he left many recordings, since reissued on CD, and of Fauré's Requiem. His repertoire extended back to music of Rameau through to Honegger and other contemporaries.
wn.com/Camille_Maurane -
Camille Saint-Saëns
Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns (French pronunciation: [ʃaʁl kamij sɛ̃sɑ̃s]; 9 October 1835 – 16 December 1921) was a French late-Romantic composer, organist, conductor, and pianist. He is known especially for The Carnival of the Animals, Danse macabre, Samson and Delilah, Piano Concerto No. 2, Cello Concerto No. 1, Havanaise, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, and his Symphony No. 3 (Organ Symphony).
Saint-Saëns was born in Paris, France, on 9 October 1835. His father, a government clerk, died three months after his birth. He was raised by his mother, Clémence, with the assistance of her aunt, Charlotte Masson, who moved in. Masson introduced Saint-Saëns to the piano, and began giving him lessons on the instrument. At about this time, age two, Saint-Saëns was found to possess perfect pitch. His first composition, a little piece for the piano dated 22 March 1839, is now kept in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Saint-Saëns's precocity was not limited to music. He learned to read and write by age three, and had some mastery of Latin by the age of seven. His first public concert appearance occurred when he was five years old, when he accompanied a Beethoven violin sonata. He went on to begin in-depth study of the full score of Don Giovanni. In 1842, Saint-Saëns began piano lessons with Camille-Marie Stamaty, a pupil of Friedrich Kalkbrenner, who had his students play the piano while resting their forearms on a bar situated in front of the keyboard, so that all the pianist's power came from the hands and fingers but not the arms. At ten years of age, Saint-Saëns gave his debut public recital at the Salle Pleyel, with a performance of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 15 in B-flat major (K. 450), and various pieces by Handel, Kalkbrenner, Hummel, and Bach. As an encore, Saint-Saëns offered to play any of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas from memory. Word of this incredible concert spread across Europe, and as far as the United States with an article in a Boston newspaper.
wn.com/Camille_Saint-Saëns -
Carlo Galeffi
Carlo Galeffi (June 4, 1882, Malamocco (Venice) - September 22, 1961, Rome) was a leading Italian baritone, particularly associated with the operatic works of Giuseppe Verdi and the various verismo composers.
The young Galeffi studied with Di Como and Sbriscia. According to The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera, he made his professional debut in 1903, aged 21, at Rome's Teatro Adriano, as Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor. Galeffi sang throughout Italy before reaching Italy's premier opera house, La Scala, Milan, in 1912. He would remain at La Scala until 1938, becoming a favorite of the conductor Arturo Toscanini.
Galeffi made his American debut in Boston in 1910. He sang at the New York Metropolitan Opera only once, on November 29 of that same year, as Verdi's Rigoletto (which was often considered to be his greatest role). Galeffi sang, too, at the Lyric Opera of Chicago from 1919 to 1921, and also appeared in South America on a number of occasions.
The bulk of Galeffi's career, however, took place in Italy, especially at La Scala, where he was much acclaimed for his performances of Verdi roles that ranged from Nabucco, through Renato, Di Luna, Amonasro and Simon Boccanegra, to Iago. Other parts that he sang included Tell in Rossini's Guglielmo Tell, Douglas in Mascagni's Guglielmo Ratcliff, Scarpia in Puccini's Tosca, Tonio in Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, Gerard in Giordano's Andrea Chénier, Amfortas in Wagner's Parsifal and Telramund in Wagner's Lohengrin.
wn.com/Carlo_Galeffi -
Carlo Tagliabue
Carlo Tagliabue (Mariano Comense, January 13, 1898 – Monza, April 5, 1978) was an Italian baritone.
After studies with Leopoldo Gennai and Annibale Guidotti he made his debut in Lodi, Lombardy, in Loreley and Aida. His debuts in Genoa (1923), Torino, La Scala (1930), Rome (1931), and Naples (1931) were all in Tristan und Isolde (sung in Italian). He also performed in Wagner's Götterdämmerung, Tannhäuser and Lohengrin. However, Tagliabue would go on to excel in the Verdian repertoire, especially La forza del destino, Aida, Rigoletto, La traviata, Nabucco, and Otello. He created the role of Basilio in Respighi's La fiamma in 1934.
His international career included Buenos Aires' Teatro Colón (1934), the Metropolitan Opera, New York (1937-39), and San Francisco Opera and Covent Garden, London (1938). Tagliabue's last performance was in 1955 at La Scala, at the famous performance of La traviata conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini and directed by Luchino Visconti, where Maria Callas scandalized the public by throwing her shoes off.
wn.com/Carlo_Tagliabue -
Cesare Formichi
Cesare Formichi (April 15, 1883, Rome - July 21, 1949, Rome) was a prominent Italian operatic baritone, particularly associated with the Italian repertory.
Formichi studied in Rome with Lombardo, and made his debut in December 1907 at the Teatro Olimpia in Bologna as Lescaut in Manon. He went on to appear in Italy's leading opera houses, including La Scala in Milan. Soon, he was accepting a string of engagements to sing outside Italy, notably in Saint Petersburg (in 1912), Buenos Aires (in 1914), Paris (in 1922), Monte-Carlo, Vienna, and London (in 1924).
He sang as first baritone at the Lyric Opera of Chicago from 1922 until 1932. He sang in Berlin in October 1933 with the Italian opera conducted by Ettore Panizza. He went with a troupe of singers from La Scala on a tour of France in 1935, and later organized opera seasons in London.
Notable roles of his included Ashton, Rigoletto, di Luna, Amonasro, Iago, and some Wagner parts sung in Italian (Klingsor, for example). Formichi possessed a big, rich-toned, important sounding voice which can be heard on the numerous acoustic and electrical recordings which he made during the peak of his career. Many of these recordings have been re-released on CD.
wn.com/Cesare_Formichi -
Charles Gounod
Charles-François Gounod (French pronunciation: [ʃaʁl fʁɑ̃swa ɡuno]; 17 June 1818 – 17 October or 18 October 1893) was a French composer, known for his Ave Maria as well as his operas Faust and Roméo et Juliette.
Gounod was born in Paris, the son of a pianist mother and an artist father. His mother was his first piano teacher. Under her tutelage, Gounod first showed his musical talents. He entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied under Fromental Halévy and Pierre Zimmermann (he later married Zimmermann's daughter). In 1839, he won the Prix de Rome for his cantata Fernand. He was following his father; François-Louis Gounod (d. 1823) had won the second Prix de Rome in painting in 1783. During his stay of four years in Italy, Gounod studied the music of Palestrina and other sacred works of the sixteenth century; these he never ceased to cherish. Around 1846-47 he gave serious consideration to joining the priesthood, but he changed his mind before actually taking holy orders, and went back to composition. During that period, he was attached to the Church of Foreign Missions in Paris.
wn.com/Charles_Gounod -
Charles Panzéra
Charles [Auguste Louis] Panzéra (Geneva, February 16, 1896 – Paris, June 6, 1976) was a Swiss operatic and concert baritone.
Panzéra's studies at the Paris Conservatory under the tuition of Amédée-Louis Hettich were interrupted by his volunteering into the French Army during World War I. Twice wounded, he was nevertheless able to complete the course and make his operatic début as Albert in Massenet's Werther at the Opéra-Comique in 1919. He remained there for three seasons, excelling in several rôles, notably Jahel in Lalo's Le roi d'Ys, Lescaut in Massenet's Manon and, most permanently, Debussy's Pelléas. He was to sing this part numerous times in several countries through 1930.
While still a student at the Conservatoire he had met both its then Director, Gabriel Fauré, who oriented him towards the interpretation of vocal chamber works, and a fellow student, pianist Magdeleine Baillot, who would become his wife and life-long accompanist.
Fauré dedicated to Panzéra his song-cycle, L'horizon chimérique, composed in the autumn of 1921. The young baritone's creation of the new score at a concert of the Société Nationale de Musique, on 13 May 1922, was a resounding success and made Panzéra's name.
wn.com/Charles_Panzéra -
Charles Santley
Sir Charles Santley (February 28, 1834 - September 22, 1922) was an English-born opera and oratorio star with a bravura technique who became the most eminent English baritone and male concert singer of the Victorian era. His has been called 'the longest, most distinguished and most versatile vocal career which history records.'
Santley appeared in many major opera and oratorio productions in Great Britain and North America, giving numerous recitals as well. Having made his debut in Italy in 1857 after undertaking vocal studies in that country, he elected to base himself in England for the remainder of his life, apart from occasional trips overseas. One of the highlights of his stage career occurred in 1870 when he led the cast in the first Wagner opera to be performed in London, Der fliegende Holländer, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Santley retired from opera during the 1870s in order to concentrate on the lucrative concert circuit.
Santley also wrote books on vocal technique and two sets of memoirs.
wn.com/Charles_Santley -
Christian Gerhaher
Christian Gerhaher (born 1969 in Straubing) is a German baritone and bass singer in opera, concert and notably Lied.
Christian Gerhaher studied with Paul Kuen and Raimund Grumbach at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München, and Lied with Friedemann Berger, already together with his accompanist for decades to come, Gerold Huber. He took master classes with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Inge Borkh.
He was a member of the opera in Würzburg from 1998 to 2000, performing in Thomas Hengelbrock's production of Così fan tutte, in Weber's Der Freischütz with the Cappella Coloniensis, and Papageno in Achim Freyer's staging of The Magic Flute. a role that he sang as his debut at the Salzburg Festival in 2006. In 2005 he portrayed the title role of Monteverdi’s L'Orfeo at the Opern- und Schauspielhaus Frankfurt where he appeared as Wolfram in Wagner's Tannhäuser in 2007.
In concert he has collaborated with Helmuth Rilling, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Neville Marriner, Philippe Herreweghe, Heinz Holliger and Trevor Pinnock, among others.
wn.com/Christian_Gerhaher -
Clarence Whitehill
Clarence Whitehill (November 5, 1871, Marengo, Iowa - December 18, 1932, New York, New York) was a leading American bass-baritone. He sang on both sides of the Atlantic and is best remembered for his association with the music dramas of Richard Wagner, and for his recordings of well-known music hall ballads such as "I'll take you home again, Kathleen".
Whitehill first studied in Chicago with L. A. Phelps, and then in Paris with Giraudet and the celebrated pedagogue Giovanni Sbriglia. In 1898, he made his stage debut at La Monnaie in Brussels, as Capulet in Roméo et Juliette. He sang Nilakhanta at the Opéra-Comique the next year, becoming the first ever American singer to perform in that famous theatre.
Wishing to broaden his repertoire, Whitehill travelled to Frankfurt in Germany to further his studies with Julius Stockhausen. He subsequently appeared on stage in several German cities, while studying the big Wagnerian baritone and bass-baritone roles. In 1904, he made a highly successful debut at the Bayreuth Festival as Wolfram in Tannhäuser. Later, he sang Amfortas and Wotan, garnering equal praise from critics and audiences.
wn.com/Clarence_Whitehill -
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy (French pronunciation: [klod aʃil dəbysi]) (22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions. In France, he was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1903. A crucial figure in the transition to the modern era in Western music, he remains one of the most famous and influential of all composers.
His music is noted for its sensory component and for not often forming around one key or pitch. Often Debussy's work reflected the activities or turbulence in his own life. In French literary circles, the style of this period was known as symbolism, a movement that directly inspired Debussy both as a composer and as an active cultural participant.
wn.com/Claude_Debussy -
Dennis Noble
Dennis Noble (25 September 1898 – 14 March 1966) was a noted British baritone and teacher. He appeared in opera, oratorio, musical comedy and song, from the First World War through to the late 1950s. He was renowned for his enunciation and diction, and for the metallic timbre of his voice. He became the most prolific radio broadcaster of his time.
He was born William Ewart Noble on 25 September 1898, in Bristol. His father's name was also William, so the younger William was known as Ewart Noble. He was trained at Bristol Cathedral's Choir School under its teacher, Dr. Hubert Hunt. He was invalided after war service in France with the Royal Bucks Hussars, but returned to the front to sing with the Fifth Army's entertainment unit, "The Gaieties". This provided him with his first stage appearance, in the opera house of Lille, in the musical Aladdin. It was around this time that he chose the professional name Dennis Noble, after seeing a Dennis lorry drive past.
In 1923 he married Marjorie Booth, a contralto. He studied singing with Dinh Gilly and Mattia Battistini. He was invited to join the choir of Westminster Abbey, and sang at the wedding of the Duke of York and Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon in April 1923.
wn.com/Dennis_Noble -
Dmitri Hvorostovsky
Dmitri Aleksandrovich Hvorostovsky PAR (Дмитрий Александрович Хворостовский, born 16 October 1962), is a leading baritone opera singer from Russia.
Hvorostovsky was born in Krasnoyarsk in Siberia. He studied at the Krasnoyarsk School of Arts under Yekatherina Yofel and made his debut at Krasnoyarsk Opera House, in the role of Marullo in Rigoletto. He went on to win First Prize at both the Russian Glinka Competition in 1987 and the Toulouse Singing Competition in 1988. Hvorostovsky came to international prominence in 1989 when he won the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, beating local favorite Bryn Terfel in the final round. His performance included Handel's "Ombra mai fu" and "Per me giunto...O Carlo ascolta" from Verdi's Don Carlo. His international concert recitals began immediately (London debut, 1989; New York 1990).
His operatic debut in the West was at the Nice Opera in The Queen of Spades (1989). In Italy he debuted at La Fenice as Eugene Onegin, a success that sealed his reputation, and made his American operatic debut with the Lyric Opera of Chicago (1993) in La traviata.
wn.com/Dmitri_Hvorostovsky -
Enrico Delle Sedie
Enrico Augusto Delle Sedie (17 June 1822 – 28 November 1907) was an Italian operatic baritone who sang extensively in Europe, performing the bel canto repertoire and in works by Verdi.
He was born in Livorno and studied with Cesario Galeffi. After retiring from the stage, he taught at the Paris Conservatory from 1876 to 1886 and later privately. The renowned lyric tenor Alessandro Bonci was one of his pupils.
"Although his voice was small, his style and musicianship were regarded as outstanding".
Delle Sedie wrote two treatises on singing (1876, 1886) as well as the book Riflessioni sulle cause della decadenza della scuola di canto in Italia (Reflections on the decline of the School of Singing in Italy) (Paris, 1881).
A street in Livorno, the city of his birth, is named after him.
wn.com/Enrico_Delle_Sedie -
Ettore Bastianini
Ettore Bastianini (September 24, 1922 – January 25, 1967) was an Italian opera singer who was particularly associated with the operas of Verdi. He had a prolific international career between 1945 and 1965 which was cut short by throat cancer. He began his professional career as a bass working in opera houses throughout Italy and in tours to Egypt and Venezuela during the 1940s. In 1952, he launched a career as a baritone that quickly earned him worldwide acclaim and brought him to the stages of many of the major opera houses in Europe and the United States. He was a frequent performer at La Scala between 1954-1963 and at the Vienna State Opera between 1958-1964. He was also a member of the Metropolitan Opera between 1954-1957 and again in 1965 during the last year of his career.
Born in Siena, Bastianini first began performing at the age of fifteen while apprenticed to a pastry chef, Gaetano Vanni, who discovered Bastianini's voice and encouraged him to join the choir of his hometown's Cathedral. Between 1937-1938 he sang as a bass during Masses and religious functions at the church. In 1939 he began singing lessons under Fathima and Anselmo Ammanati who continued training him as a bass. He sang his first professional concerts in 1940 and 1941 in Asciano and Siena at the Fortezza Medicea and Teatro dei Rozzi. In 1942 he won first prize at the 6th National Singing Contest at the Teatro Comunale Florence but was soon drafted into the Italian Air Force which prevented him from immediately enjoying the scholarship accompanying the prize.
wn.com/Ettore_Bastianini -
Eugenio Giraldoni
Eugenio Giraldoni (May 20, 1871, Marseille - June 23, 1924, Helsinki) was an Italian operatic baritone who enjoyed a substantial international career. In 1900, he created the role of Baron Scarpia.
He was the son of another leading baritone, Leone Giraldoni, and the soprano and violinist Carolina Ferni. His mother gave him voice lessons and he made his opera debut in Barcelona, as Escamillo in Carmen, in 1891.
Giraldoni consolidated his career by appearing at various operatic venues in Italy and, in 1898, visiting South America. Then, in 1900, he earned a place in operatic history when he created the part of Baron Scarpia in Giacomo Puccini's Tosca, at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome. He also appeared in the first performance of Ildebrando Pizzetti's La figlia di Jorio at Italy's foremost opera house, La Scala, Milan, in 1906.
He sang in Russia and Poland from 1901 until 1907 and at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City during the 1904-05 season. In 1913, he appeared at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, as Scarpia and Sharpless.
wn.com/Eugenio_Giraldoni -
Felice Varesi
Felice Varesi (born Calais, 1813 - died Milan, 13 March 1889) was a French-born Italian baritone with an illustrious singing career that began in the 1830s and extended into the 1860s. He is best remembered today for his close association with several famous operas composed by Giuseppe Verdi, whose birth year he shared.
Specializing initially in the bel canto operas of Verdi's predecessor Gaetano Donizetti, Varesi began his career in Varese in 1834 and went on to sing in Faenza, Florence, Modena, Rome, Perugia and Genoa. By 1841 he was singing at La Scala, Milan, and from 1842 to 1847 he was in demand in Vienna, where he appeared at the Kärntnertortheater. Here he created the role of Antonio in Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix as well as appearing in other works by the same composer.
In 1844 he sang the role of Don Carlo in Ernani at Padua, his initial Verdi opera, and later appeared as the Doge in Verdi's I due Foscari. In 1847, in Florence, he was the first Macbeth in Verdi's opera of that name. Then, in 1851 at La Fenice, Venice, he created Verdi's Rigoletto, and in 1853, at the same house, he became Verdi's original Germont in La traviata. (Varesi disliked Germont's character but sang the part anyway.)
wn.com/Felice_Varesi -
Ferdinando Paer
Ferdinando Paer (1 July 1771 – 3 May 1839) was an Italian composer known for his operas and oratorios.
Paer was born at Parma. His father was a trumpeter with the Ducal Bodyguards and also performed at church and court events. His name, Ferdinando, was after Duke Ferdinand of Parma and was given to him by Archduchess Maria Amalia of Austria, Duke Ferdinand's wife. He studied the theory of music under the violinist Ghiretti, a pupil of the Conservatorio della Pietà de' Turchini at Naples. His first Italian opera, Circe, was given in Venice during carnival 1792; others rapidly followed, and his name was soon famous throughout Italy. In 1797 he went to Vienna, where his future wife, the singer Francesca Riccardi, had obtained an engagement and he became music director of the Kärntnertortheater until 1801; here he produced a series of operas, including his Camilla (1799) and his Achille (1801). In 1802 he was appointed composer to the court theatre at Dresden, where his wife was also engaged as a singer, and in 1804 the life appointment of Hofkapellmeister was bestowed upon him by the elector.
wn.com/Ferdinando_Paer -
Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio (Dante Michelangelo Benvenuto) Busoni (April 1, 1866 – July 27, 1924) was an Italian composer, pianist, editor, writer, piano and composition teacher, and conductor.
Ferruccio Busoni was born in Empoli in Tuscany in Italy, the only child of two professional musicians. His father, Ferdinando, was a clarinetist and man-about-town. Though his mother, Anna, had a German surname (Weiss) she was an Italian from Trieste, and a pianist. They were often touring during his childhood, and he was brought up in Trieste for the most part.
Busoni was a child prodigy. He made his public debut on the piano with his parents, at the age of seven. A couple of years later he played some of his own compositions in Vienna where he heard Franz Liszt play, and met Liszt, Johannes Brahms and Anton Rubinstein.
Busoni had a brief period of study in Graz with Wilhelm Mayer (who used the pseudonym of W. A. Rémy and also taught Felix Weingartner) and was also helped by Wilhelm Kienzl, who enabled him to conduct a performance of his own composition 'Stabat Mater' when he was twelve years old, before leaving for Leipzig in 1886 where he studied with Carl Reinecke (a former pupil of Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann). He subsequently held several teaching posts, the first in 1888 at Helsinki, where he met his wife, Gerda Sjöstrand, the daughter of Swedish sculptor Carl Eneas Sjöstrand, and began a lifelong friendship with Jean Sibelius. In 1890 he won the Anton Rubinstein Competition with his Concert Piece for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 31a. He taught in Moscow in 1890, and in the United States from 1891 to 1894 where he also toured as a virtuoso pianist.
wn.com/Ferruccio_Busoni -
Francesco Cilea
Francesco Cilea (also Cilèa) (July 23, 1866 – November 20, 1950) was an Italian composer. Today he is particularly known for his operas L'arlesiana and Adriana Lecouvreur.
Born in Palmi near Reggio Calabria, Cilea gave early indication of an aptitude for music when at the age of four he heard a performance of Vincenzo Bellini's Norma and was greatly affected by it. He was sent to study music at the Conservatorio San Pietro a Maiella in Naples, where he quickly demonstrated his diligence and precocious talent, earning a gold medal from the Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione (Department of Education).
In 1889, for his final examination at the end of his course of study, he submitted his opera Gina, with a libretto by Enrico Golisciani which was adapted from the old French play Catherine, ou La Croix d'or by Baron Anne-Honoré-Joseph Duveyrier de Mélésville (1787—1865). This melodramma idilico was performed in the college theatre, and it attracted the attention of the publishers Sonzogno, who arranged for a second production, in Florence, in 1892.
wn.com/Francesco_Cilea -
Francesco Marconi
Francesco Marconi (14 May 1853 [or 1855] – 5 February 1916) was an operatic tenor from Rome who enjoyed an important international career. In 1924, a reputable biographical dictionary of musicians called him 'one of the most renowned and esteemed singers of the last 50 years'. Along with his great contemporary Francesco Tamagno (1850–1905), he is the earliest Italian tenor to have left a representative legacy of acoustic recordings.
Born of humble origins in Rome, "Cecco" Marconi worked as a carpenter during his youth. The promising quality of his voice came to the attention of a singing teacher, Ottavio Bartolini, who gave him his first lessons. Later, he studied with a much more prominent pedagogue, Venceslao Persichini, at the Rome Conservatory. Persichini also taught Marconi's coevals Antonio Magini-Coletti (1855–1912) and Mattia Battistini (1856–1928)—both of whom were baritones with outstanding voices and, like Marconi, international reputations.
Marconi made his operatic debut in the Spanish capital of Madrid in 1878 at the Teatro Real, singing the title role in Faust by Charles Gounod. His debut was a success, and he was soon appearing regularly at Italy's premier opera house, La Scala, Milan, with lucrative summer seasons spent performing in South America, mainly at Buenos Aires. He also sang with distinction at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, for two seasons: 1883 and 1884.
wn.com/Francesco_Marconi -
Franchinus Gaffurius
Franchinus Gaffurius (Franchino Gaffurio; January 14, 1451 – June 25, 1522) was an Italian music theorist and composer of the Renaissance. He was an almost exact contemporary of Josquin des Prez and Leonardo da Vinci, both of whom were his personal friends. He was one of the most famous musicians in Italy in the late 15th and early 16th centuries.
He was born in Lodi to an aristocratic family. Early in life he entered a Benedictine monastery, where he acquired his early musical training; later he became a priest. Later he lived in Mantua and Verona before settling in Milan as the maestro di cappella at the cathedral there, a position which he accepted in January 1484.
During the previous decade the Sforza family, using the composer Gaspar van Weerbeke as a recruiter, had built the choir at their chapel in Milan into one of the largest and most distinguished musical ensembles in Europe: composer-singers such as Alexander Agricola, Loyset Compère and Johannes Martini had all been employed there. While the membership of the choir at the Milan cathedral was mostly Italian, the cross-influence between his choir and the group at the Sforza chapel was significant. Gaffurius retained the post at the cathedral for the rest of his life, and it was in Milan that he knew both Josquin des Prez and Leonardo da Vinci.
wn.com/Franchinus_Gaffurius -
Francis Poulenc
Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (French pronunciation: [fʁɑ̃sis ʒɑ̃ maʁsɛl pulɛ̃k]) (7 January 1899 – 30 January 1963) was a French composer and a member of the French group Les Six. He composed solo piano music, chamber music, oratorio, choral music, opera, ballet music, and orchestral music. Critic Claude Rostand, in a July 1950 Paris-Presse article, coined the term "half monk, half thug" (translated by Ivry from "le moine et le voyou"), a phrase that would often be used to describe Poulenc.
Poulenc was born in Paris in 1899. His father Emile Poulenc was a second generation director of the Poulenc, and later Rhône-Poulenc, chemical corporation. His mother, an amateur pianist, taught him to play. He was introduced to Ricardo Viñes in 1914, a champion of the music of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, and became his pupil shortly afterwards. He was a capable pianist, and the keyboard dominated his early compositions.
In 1916 a childhood friend, Raymonde Linossier (1897-1930), introduced Poulenc to Adrienne Monnier's bookshop, the Maison des Amis des Livres. There he met avant-garde poets such as Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Paul Eluard and Louis Aragon. He was to set many of their poems to music.
wn.com/Francis_Poulenc -
Frank Guarrera
Frank Guarrera (December 3, 1923 - November 23, 2007) was an Italian-American lyric baritone who enjoyed a long and distinguished career at the Metropolitan Opera, singing with the company for a total of 680 performances. He performed 35 different roles at the Met, mostly from the Italian and French repertories, from 1948 through 1976. His most frequent assignments at the house were as Escamillo in Georges Bizet's Carmen, Marcello in Giacomo Puccini's La Bohème, Valentin in Charles Gounod's Faust, and Ping in Puccini's Turandot. He was also an admired interpreter of Mozart roles, establishing himself in the parts of both Guglielmo and Don Alfonso in Così fan tutte and Count Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro. Most of the roles he portrayed were from the lyric repertoire, such as the title role in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, but he also sang some heavier roles at the Met like Amonasro in Aïda, Jack Rance in La fanciulla del West and Il conte di Luna in Il trovatore.
Although Guarrera did not possess as large of a voice as some of his fellow Met baritones, such as Leonard Warren and Robert Merrill, he managed to carve out a highly successful career for himself at the house through his charismatic stage presence, good looks, and well-focused lyrical tone. He sang at the Met during a "golden age of baritones" whose members also included Robert Weede, Tito Gobbi, Cornell MacNeil, Sherrill Milnes and Anselmo Colzani.The Times said that, "Frank Guarrera was a rare all-rounder, a singer whose competence, versatility, intelligence, good stage presence and the absence of inflated ideas of his own importance made him a valued colleague and the kind of stalwart company member that opera managers dream about."
wn.com/Frank_Guarrera -
Franz Betz
Franz Betz (19 March 1835 – 11 August 1900) was a German bass-baritone opera singer who sang at the Berlin State Opera from 1859 to 1897. He was particularly known for his performances in operas by Richard Wagner and created the role of Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
Franz Betz was born in Mainz and trained as a singer in Karlsruhe. He made his debut in 1856 at the Court Theater of Hanover as The Herald in Wagner's Lohengrin, after which he sang as a guest performer in various other German opera houses. His 1859 success at the Berlin State Opera in the role of Don Carlo in Verdi's Ernani, led to a permanent contract with the company.
He became one of Wagner's most trusted singers, and sang the role of Hans Sachs in the world premiere of his Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (National Theatre Munich, 1868). Betz sang the role more than a hundred times and was closely identified with the character. He also sang Wotan in Das Rheingold and Die Walküre and The Wanderer in Siegfried for the first complete performance of Der Ring des Nibelungen (Bayreuth Festspielhaus, 1876). In May 1872 he was one of the four soloists in the performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony to mark the laying of the foundation stone for the Bayreuth Festspielhaus.
wn.com/Franz_Betz -
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert (German pronunciation: [ˈfʁants ˈʃuːbɛɐ̯t]; 31 January 1797 – 19 November 1828) was an Austrian composer.
Although he died at the age of 31, Schubert was a prolific composer, having written some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies (including the famous "Unfinished Symphony"), liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music. Appreciation of Schubert's music during his lifetime was limited, but interest in his work increased significantly in the decades following his death. Franz Liszt, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms and Felix Mendelssohn, among others, discovered and championed his works in the 19th century. Today, Schubert is seen as one of the leading exponents of the early Romantic era in music and he remains one of the most frequently performed composers.
Schubert was born in Himmelpfortgrund (now a part of Alsergrund), Vienna, on 31 January 1797. His father, Franz Theodor Schubert, the son of a Moravian peasant, was a parish schoolmaster; his mother, Elisabeth Vietz, was the daughter of a Silesian master locksmith, and had also been a housemaid for a Viennese family prior to her marriage. Of Franz Theodor's fourteen children (one illegitimate child was born in 1783), nine died in infancy; five survived. Their father was a well-known teacher, and his school in Lichtental, a part of Vienna's 9th district, was well attended. He was not a musician of fame or with formal training, but he taught his son some elements of music.
wn.com/Franz_Schubert -
Friedrich Schorr
Friedrich Schorr (September 2, 1888 – August 14, 1953), was a renowned Austrian-Hungarian bass-baritone opera singer of Jewish origin. He later became a naturalized American.
Schorr is recognized as the greatest Wagnerian bass-baritone of his generation, arguably of the entire 20th century, and was particularly famous for his profound portrayals of Wotan in Der Ring des Nibelungen and Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. He was celebrated, too, for his appearances as Don Pizarro in Beethoven's Fidelio.
His voice was powerful, steady and rich-toned, with a beautiful mezza voce. He placed a special and an emphasis on maintaining a smooth, legato line in his singing, with no trace of Sprechgesang. Towards the end of Schorr's career his extreme top notes became somewhat 'wooden', however, as the result of many years of strenuous usage.
The son of a cantor (hazzan) Mayer Schorr, who reportedly had a fine voice himself, Schorr was born in Oradea [Nagyvarad at the time]. He studied in Brno and Vienna with Adolf Robinson. He made his stage debut in Graz, singing there in 1912-1916. Afterwards he worked in Prague (1916–1918), Cologne (1918–1923), Berlin (State Opera Unter den Linden, 1923–1931). He also made acclaimed appearances in London at Covent Garden (1924–1931), at New York's Metropolitan Opera (1924–1943) and the Bayreuth Festival (1925–1933).
wn.com/Friedrich_Schorr -
Gabriel Soulacroix
Gabriel-Valentin Soulacroix (11 December 1853 [some sources say 1852], Villeneuve-sur-Lot – 16 August 1905, Paris) was a French operatic baritone. He studied at Toulouse, where he won four first prizes, and then in Paris.
Making his debut in Mireille on 5 September 1878, Soulacroix appeared regularly at La Monnaie, Brussels, including in some local operatic premieres.
His repertoire in Brussels included Le timbre d'argent by Camille Saint-Saëns (10 February 1879, playing the doctor), L'orage, an opéra-comique by Jean Urich (2 May 1879, Julien), The magic flute in French, (January to April 1880, Papageno), La Bernoise, an opéra comique by Emile Mathieu (1 April 1880, André), Le capitaine Raymond, an opéra comique by Jean-Baptiste Colyns (8 April 1881, Le comte de Guitaut), Jean de Nivelle by Léo Delibes (28 November 1882, Le comte de Charolais), Le panache blanc, an opéra comique by Philippe Flon (15 February 1884), Manon (15 March 1884, Lescaut), Le trésor, an opéra-comique by Charles Edouard Lefebvre (15 December 1884, Le duc Jean), Joli Gilles by Ferdinand Poise (7 February 1885, title role), and The Mastersingers of Nuremberg in French (7 March 1885, Sixtus Beckmesser).
wn.com/Gabriel_Soulacroix -
Gaetano Donizetti
Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti (Italian pronunciation: [doˈmeːniko ɡaeˈtaːno maˈɾia doniˈdzetti]; 29 November 1797 – 8 April 1848) was an Italian composer from Bergamo, Lombardy. His best-known works are the operas L'elisir d'amore (1832), Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), and Don Pasquale (1843), all in Italian, and the French operas La favorite and La fille du régiment (both from 1840). Along with Vincenzo Bellini and Gioachino Rossini, he was a leading composer of bel canto opera.
The youngest of three sons, Donizetti was born in 1797 in Bergamo's Borgo Canale quarter located just outside the city walls. His family was very poor with no tradition of music, his father being the caretaker of the town pawnshop. Nevertheless, Donizetti received some musical instruction from Simon Mayr, a German composer of internationally successful operas who had become maestro di cappella at Bergamo's principal church in 1802.
wn.com/Gaetano_Donizetti -
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet (French pronunciation: [ʒɔʁʒ bizɛ]) formally Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, (25 October 1838 – 3 June 1875) was a French composer, mainly of operas. In a career cut short by his early death, he achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, became one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertory.
During a brilliant student career at the Conservatoire de Paris, Bizet won many prizes, including the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1857. He was recognised as an outstanding pianist, though he chose not to capitalise on this skill and rarely performed in public. Returning to Paris after almost three years in Italy, he found that the main Parisian opera theatres preferred the established classical repertoire to the works of newcomers. His keyboard and orchestral compositions were likewise largely ignored; as a result, his career stalled, and he earned his living mainly by arranging and transcribing the music of others. Restless for success, he began many theatrical projects during the 1860s, most of which were abandoned. Neither of the two operas that reached the stage—Les pêcheurs de perles and La jolie fille de Perth—was immediately successful.
wn.com/Georges_Bizet -
Geraint Evans
Sir Geraint Llewellyn Evans (16 February 1922 – 19 September 1992) was a Welsh baritone or bass-baritone noted for operatic roles including Figaro in Le nozze di Figaro, Papageno in Die Zauberflöte, and the title roles in Falstaff and Wozzeck. He sang more than 70 different roles in a career that lasted from his first appearance at Covent Garden in 1948 to his farewell there in 1984.
Evans was born in Cilfynydd, the only son of William John Evans (1899–1978), a coal miner, and his wife, Charlotte May, née Thomas (1901–1923). His family was Welsh speaking, and Evans spoke Welsh before he learned English. On leaving school, aged 14, he worked as a window dresser for the High Class Ladies' Wear store in Pontypridd. In his spare time, he took singing lessons in Cardiff from Idloes Owen, who went on to found the Welsh National Opera as well as singing with the local Methodist choir and the local amateur dramatic society. On the outbreak of World War II, he volunteered for the Royal Air Force; he was trained as a radio mechanic, but also took part in services entertainments. After the war he worked for the British Forces Radio Network in Hamburg, where he sang with the radio chorus and took lessons from the baritone Theo Herrmann. He then studied with Fernando Carpi in Geneva and at the Guildhall School of Music in London with Walter Hyde.
wn.com/Geraint_Evans -
Gerald Finley
Gerald Finley (born 30 January 1960) is a Canadian bass-baritone opera singer.
He was born in Montreal and received his musical education in St. Matthew's Anglican Church, Ottawa, the University of Ottawa, King's College, Cambridge and the Royal College of Music in London, England. The sometime organist of Westminster Abbey, Sir William Mckie, who lived during his last years in Ottawa and who was Finley's great-uncle, encouraged him in his early musical activities.
He is particularly renowned for his interpretations of Mozart roles such as Guglielmo, Papageno, Figaro, the Count and Don Giovanni. He made his New York debut at the Metropolitan Opera on January 24, 1998 in the role of Papageno in Die Zauberflöte. He has subsequently performed the title role of Don Giovanni and Marcello in Puccini's La bohème at the Metropolitan.
In addition to his success with Mozart, Finley has been active in contemporary opera. He has created a number of roles including Doctor Oppenheimer in the world premiere of John Adams' opera Doctor Atomic at the San Francisco Opera on October 1, 2005. This opera had its Metropolitan Opera premiere with Finley in the Oppenheimer role on October 13, 2008 and was broadcast as part of the Met's Live in HD broadcast series on November 8, 2008. Other roles he has originated include Harry Heegan in The Silver Tassie by Mark-Anthony Turnage at the English National Opera and the title role in Fantastic Mr. Fox by Tobias Picker at the Los Angeles Opera.
wn.com/Gerald_Finley -
Gerhard Hüsch
Gerhard Heinrich Wilhelm Fritz Hüsch (2 February 1901 – 23 November 1984) was one of the most important German singers of modern times. A lyric baritone, he specialized in Lieder but also sang, to a lesser extent, German and Italian opera.
Hüsch was born in Hanover in 1901. He studied acting there as a young man but later took up singing, gaining experience at a series of provincial German theatres, proving to be a brilliant comic actor. Between 1925 and 1944, he was engaged to sing regularly in Berlin (most significantly at the Berlin State Opera) and at several other leading opera venues in Germany and Austria. Such important overseas theatres as The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, and La Scala, Milan, heard him sing during the 1930s, when his international reputation attained its peak.
The operatic role for which he is perhaps best remembered is that of Papageno, in Mozart's The Magic Flute. (In 1937-38 he recorded a complete Papageno for HMV, with Sir Thomas Beecham conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.) His stage repertoire, however, included most of the standard roles for the lighter baritone voice, including those of Wagner. Indeed, he was invited to perform at the annual Bayreuth Festival, most famously in 1930 and 1931 as Wolfram in Tannhäuser, under the baton of Arturo Toscanini. The vocal music of Richard Strauss was familiar to him, too, and he took part in the premiere of Strauss's Intermezzo.
wn.com/Gerhard_Hüsch -
Giacomo Meyerbeer
Giacomo Meyerbeer (5 September 1791 – 2 May 1864) was a noted German opera composer, and the first great exponent of "grand opera." At his peak in the 1830s and 1840s, he was the most famous and successful composer of opera in Europe, yet he is rarely performed today.
He was born to a Jewish family in Tasdorf (now a part of Rüdersdorf), near Berlin with the name Jacob Liebmann Beer. His father was the enormously wealthy financier Jacob Judah Herz Beer (1769-1825) and his much-beloved mother, Amalia Liebmann Meyer Wulff (1767-1854) also came from the wealthy elite. Their other children included the astronomer Wilhelm Beer and the poet Michael Beer.
Beer's first keyboard instructor was Franz Lauska, a pupil of Johann Georg Albrechtsberger and a favoured teacher at the Berlin court. Beer also became one of Muzio Clementi's pupils while Clementi was in Berlin, and old Clementi himself, although he had long given up teaching, was so much struck, during a visit to Berlin, with the promise displayed in the boy's performance as to consent to give Beer lessons. Beer made his public debut in 1801 playing Mozart's D minor Piano Concerto in Berlin. The Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung reported: 'The amazing keyboard playing of young Bär (a Jewish lad of 9), who carried off the difficult passages and other solo parts with aplomb, and has fine powers of rendition even more rarely found in one of his age, made the concert even more interesting'.
wn.com/Giacomo_Meyerbeer -
Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini (Italian pronunciation: [ˈdʒaːkomo putˈtʃiːni]; 22 December 1858 – 29 November 1924) was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire. Some of his arias, such as "O mio babbino caro" from Gianni Schicchi, "Che gelida manina" from La bohème, and "Nessun dorma" from Turandot, have become part of popular culture.
Described by Encyclopædia Britannica Online as "one of the greatest exponents of operatic realism", he is regarded as one of the last major Italian opera composers. His repertoire is essentially rooted in verismo, or a post-Romantic operatic tradition and literary style. Whilst his work is essentially based on traditional late-19th century Italian opera, his music shows some influences from then-contemporary composers and movements such as Igor Stravinsky and Impressionism. Common themes within his operas include the important role, yet usually tragic end, of his heroines, as well as love; furthermore, there is a strong presence of exoticism in his operas, with several being set in faraway locations.
wn.com/Giacomo_Puccini -
Giangiacomo Guelfi
Giangiacomo Guelfi (December 21, 1924 – February 8, 2012) was an operatic baritone, particularly associated with Verdi and Puccini.
Born in Rome, (He is not to be confused with Carlo Guelfi, a younger baritone, also born in Rome.) Giangiacomo Guelfi studied law before turning to vocal studies, in Florence, with the great baritone Titta Ruffo. He made his stage debut in Spoleto, as Rigoletto in 1950. He made his debut in 1952 at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, also appearing in Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples, Palermo, Catania, and becoming a regular guest at the Arena di Verona. Outside Italy he appeared in Berlin, Lisbon, London, Cairo. He made his American debut in 1954 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and at the Metropolitan Opera of New York in 1970, he also appeared in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro. He took part in the creation of contemporary works notably Lazzaro in Pizzetti's La figlia di Jorio, Naples, 1954. However he was mostly known for his Verdi portrayals in opera such as; Nabucco, I due Foscari, Attila, Macbeth, Il trovatore, I vespri siciliani, La forza del destino, Aida, etc. He was also appreciated in verismo operas such as Cavalleria rusticana, Andrea Chénier, Tosca, and La fanciulla del West.
wn.com/Giangiacomo_Guelfi -
Gino Bechi
Gino Bechi (16 October 1913 – 2 February 1993) was an Italian operatic baritone, particularly associated with the Italian repertory, especially in Verdi roles.
Bechi studied in his native Florence with Raul Frazzi and di Giorgio, and made his debut at Empoli, in 1936, as Germont in La traviata.
He sang widely in Italy, appearing frequently at the Rome Opera from 1938 to 1952, and at La Scala from 1939 to 1953, where he sang the title role in Nabucco for its reopening in 1946.
He quickly established himself as the leading dramatic baritone of his time, in roles such as Rigoletto, Count de Luna, Renato, Carlo, Amonasro, Alfio, Gérard, but was also admired as Figaro and Hamlet.
Bechi sang relatively little outside Italy, but did appear in England and North and South America in the late 1950s, but by then he was past his best.
In his prime, Bechi possessed a dark and incisive voice and was a fine singing actor. He can be heard in a number of early recordings, opposite Beniamino Gigli, such as Un ballo in maschera, Aida, Andrea Chénier, and Cavalleria rusticana, conducted by Pietro Mascagni himself. He also recorded Il barbiere di Siviglia. Also available is a pirate recording of Nabucco, with Maria Callas, from 1949, and the Prologue from Pagliacci.
wn.com/Gino_Bechi -
Gioachino Rossini
Gioachino Antonio Rossini (Italian pronunciation: [dʒoaˈkiːno anˈtɔːnjo rosˈsiːni] (Giovacchino Antonio Rossini in the baptismal certificate) (29 February 1792 – 13 November 1868) was an Italian composer who wrote 39 operas as well as sacred music, chamber music, songs, and some instrumental and piano pieces. His best-known operas include the Italian comedies Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) and La Cenerentola and the French-language epics Moïse et Pharaon and Guillaume Tell (William Tell). A tendency for inspired, song-like melodies is evident throughout his scores, which led to the nickname "The Italian Mozart". Until his retirement in 1829, Rossini had been the most popular opera composer in history.
Gioachino Antonio Rossini was born into a family of musicians in Pesaro, a town on the Adriatic coast of Italy which was then part of the Papal States. His father, Giuseppe, was a horn player and inspector of slaughterhouses. His mother, Anna, was a singer and a baker's daughter. Rossini's parents began his musical training early, and by the age of six he was playing the triangle in his father's musical group.
wn.com/Gioachino_Rossini -
Giorgio Ronconi
Giorgio Ronconi (6 August 1810 - 8 January 1890) was an Italian operatic baritone celebrated for his brilliant acting and compelling stage presence. In 1842, he created the title-role in Giuseppe Verdi's Nabucco at La Scala, Milan.
Ronconi was born in Milan and had been taught to sing by his father, Domenico Ronconi, who was a leading tenor. He made his operatic debut at Pavia in 1831, as Valdeburgo in Bellini's La straniera, and went on to sing at La Scala and elsewhere in Italy. In the 1830s and 1840s, he appeared in the first performances of seven operas by Donizetti. They were in:
He married soprano Elguerra Giannoni on 8 October 1837 in Naples, Italy. By some accounts Giannoni had sung with some success at the Lyceum Theatre and at the King's Theatre in London. However, Harold Rosenthal has written: "This lady, who failed on virtually every opera stage in Europe, was considered a good concert-room singer only, but so indispensable was her husband to any Italian company that willy-nilly she had to be engaged as well."
wn.com/Giorgio_Ronconi -
Giorgio Zancanaro
Giorgio Zancanaro (Verona, May 9, 1939) is an Italian baritone, particularly associated with the Italian repertory, especially Verdi.
He studied in his native Verona with Maria Palanda, and was revealed at the Verdi Competition in Busseto in 1969. He made his official operatic debut the following year in Mantua, as Riccardo in I puritani. Quickly invited to sing at all the major opera houses of Italy, establishing himself as the eminent "Verdi baritone" of his generation, notably in I masnadieri, Luisa Miller, La traviata. He made his debut at La Scala in 1982, as Ford in Falstaff, and took part in important revivals of Attila and I vespri siciliani, under Riccardo Muti.
On the international scene, he appeared in London, Paris, Zurich, Vienna, Barcelona, Lisbon, Caracas, etc. He also sang at the festivals of Orange, in 1982 , as Posa in Don Carlo, and Bregenz, in 1985, as Riccardo in I puritani, opposite Edita Gruberova and Salvatore Fisichella.
He made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera, in 1982, as Renato in Un ballo in maschera, considered one of his best roles. He also appeared at the San Francisco Opera and the Dallas Opera.
wn.com/Giorgio_Zancanaro -
Giuseppe De Luca
Giuseppe De Luca (December 25, 1876 – August 26, 1950), was a famous Italian baritone who achieved his greatest triumphs at the New York Metropolitan Opera. He notably created roles in the world premieres of two operas by Giacomo Puccini: Sharpless in Madama Butterfly (at La Scala, Milan, 1904) and the title role in Gianni Schicchi (Metropolitan Opera, 1918).
De Luca was born in Rome, the son of a blacksmith, and sang in church choirs as a boy. After his voice broke, a wealthy patron paid for him to have singing lessons at the Rome Conservatory, where he studied with two top-class pedagogues, Venceslao Persichini (who also taught De Luca's fellow baritone stars Mattia Battistini and Titta Ruffo) and Antonio Cotogni. He made his operatic debut at Piacenza in 1897, singing Valentin in Gounod's Faust. His debut proved a success and he was invited to sing at a string of more important venues.
He appeared at Italy's foremost opera house, La Scala, Milan, from 1902 to 1910, and made his London debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 1907.
wn.com/Giuseppe_De_Luca -
Giuseppe Taddei
Giuseppe Taddei (26 June 1916 – 2 June 2010) was an Italian baritone, who performed mostly the operas of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Giuseppe Verdi.
Taddei was born in Genoa, Italy, and studied in Rome, where he made his professional debut in 1936 as the Herald in Wagner's Lohengrin. He sang at the Rome Opera until he was conscripted into the army in 1942. After the war, he resumed his opera career and appeared for two seasons at the Vienna State Opera. He made his debut in London in 1947, at the Cambridge Theatre. The following year, 1948, saw his debut at the Salzburg Festival, La Scala in Milan, and the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples.
His American debut took place at the San Francisco Opera in 1957, followed by his appearance with Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1959. He sang regularly at the Royal Opera House in London from 1960 to 1967.
Taddei was equally effective in comedy and drama. His acting repertoire included the two Figaros, from The Marriage of Figaro and The Barber of Seville, both Leporello and Don Giovanni in Don Giovanni, both Belcore and Dulcamara in L'elisir d'amore, as well as Ernani, Macbeth, Rigoletto, Amonasro in Aida, Iago in Otello, Falstaff, Barnaba in La Gioconda, Gérard in Andrea Chénier, and Scarpia in Tosca, among others.
wn.com/Giuseppe_Taddei -
Giuseppe Valdengo
Giuseppe Valdengo (May 24, 1914, Turin – October 3, 2007, Aosta) was an Italian operatic baritone. Opera News said that, "Although his timbre lacked the innate beauty of some of his baritone contemporaries, Valdengo's performances were invariably satisfying — bold and assured in attack but scrupulously musical."
Valdengo first studied the cello and oboe before turning to vocal studies with Accoriti in his native Turin. He made his operatic debut as Figaro in Il barbiere di Siviglia, at the Teatro Regio di Parma in 1936. Shortly thereafter he made his Teatro alla Scala debut, as Germont in La traviata. He was drafted into military service in 1939 by the Italian government and did not appear on the stage for the next three years. His opera career recommenced in 1942 with a lauded performance of Marcello in La bohème at Parma.
Valdengo made his American debut at the New York City Opera as Sharpless in Madama Butterfly in 1946. He remained on that company's roster through the spring 1948 season, singing the title role in Rigoletto, Tonio in Pagliacci, Escamillo in Carmen and Giorgio Germont in La Traviata. He was also a regular performer at the Philadelphia La Scala Opera Company between 1946–1948, singing Amonasro in Aida, the Count di Luna in Il trovatore, Rigoletto, and Valentin in Charles Gounod's Faust. In September 1947 he made his San Francisco Opera debut as Valentin.
wn.com/Giuseppe_Valdengo -
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (Italian pronunciation: [dʒuˈzɛppe ˈverdi]; 10 October 1813 – 27 January 1901) was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century. His works are frequently performed in opera houses throughout the world and, transcending the boundaries of the genre, some of his themes have long since taken root in popular culture – such as "La donna è mobile" from Rigoletto, "Va, pensiero" (The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves) from Nabucco, "Libiamo ne' lieti calici" (The Drinking Song) from La traviata and the "Grand March" from Aida.
Verdi’s masterworks dominate the standard opera repertoire a century and a half after their composition.
Verdi was born the son of Carlo Giuseppe Verdi and Luigia Uttini in Le Roncole, a village near Busseto, then in the Département Taro which was a part of the First French Empire after the annexation of the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza. The baptismal register, on 11 October lists him as being "born yesterday", but since days were often considered to begin at sunset, this could have meant either 9 or 10 October. The next day, he was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church in Latin as Joseph Fortuninus Franciscus. The day after that (Tuesday), Verdi's father took his newborn the three miles to Busseto, where the baby was recorded as Joseph Fortunin François; the clerk wrote in French. "So it happened that for the civil and temporal world Verdi was born a Frenchman."
wn.com/Giuseppe_Verdi -
Gérard Souzay
Gérard Souzay (8 December 1918 – 17 August 2004) was a French baritone singer, regarded as one of the very finest interpreters of mélodie (French art song) in the generation after Charles Panzéra and Pierre Bernac.
He was born Gérard Marcel Tisserand, but later adopted the stage name of Souzay from a village on the river Loire. He came from a musical family in Angers, France. His parents had met at one of the first performances of Pelléas et Mélisande in 1902; his mother and two brothers were singers, and his sister, 15 years older, was the soprano Geneviève Touraine, who gave the first performance of Poulenc's Fiançailles pour rire in 1942. After his schooling at the Collège Rabelais in Chinon, he went to the Sorbonne in Paris to study philosophy, and while there he met the singer Pierre Bernac, who encouraged him to study singing.
Souzay entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1940, studying with Claire Croiza and Jean-Emil Vanni-Marcoux. He actually began singing as a tenor, but in 1943, with advice from the leading operatic singer Henri Etcheverry, he became a baritone. He graduated from the Conservatoire in 1945 with two first prizes, the Prix de chant and the Prix de vocalise. While at the Conservatoire, he also tried his hand at composition and in 1942 three of his settings of poems by Paul Valéry were given a performance by Pierre Bernac. He went on to study voice with Bernac, although he subsequently expressed some differences with the latter's methods and ideas on pronunciation. He was eager not to limit himself to being a specialist in the French repertoire, and he made a detailed study of German lieder with Lotte Lehmann.
wn.com/Gérard_Souzay -
Hans Hotter
Hans Hotter (19 January 1909 – 6 December 2003) was a German operatic bass-baritone, admired internationally after World War II for the power, beauty, and intelligence of his singing, especially in Wagner operas. He was extremely tall and his appearance was striking because of his high, narrow face, wide mouth, and big, aquiline nose. His voice and diction were equally recognisable.
Born in Offenbach am Main, Hesse, Hotter studied with Matthäus Roemer in Munich. He worked as an organist and choirmaster before making his operatic debut in Opava in 1930.
He performed in Germany and Austria under the Nazi regime, despite avoiding pressure on performers to join the Nazi Party, and made some appearances outside the country, including concerts under the baton of Bruno Walter in Amsterdam, who advised him that if Hotter could not leave his family members he had little alternative but remain in Germany. Hotter was unable to pursue an international career until his Covent Garden debut in 1947. After that, he sang in all the major opera houses of Europe. He made his Metropolitan Opera debut as the title role in The Flying Dutchman in 1950. In four seasons at the Met, he performed 35 times in 13 roles, almost all Wagnerian.
wn.com/Hans_Hotter -
Hans Sachs
Hans Sachs (5 November 1494 – 19 January 1576) was a German meistersinger ("mastersinger"), poet, playwright and shoemaker.
Hans Sachs was born in Nuremberg (German: Nürnberg).As a child he attended a singing school that was held in the church of Nuremberg. This helped to awaken in him a taste for poetry and music. His father was a tailor. He attended Latin school (German: Lateinschule) in Nuremberg. When he was 14 he took up an apprenticeship as a shoemaker.
After the apprenticeship, at age 17, he was a journeyman and set out on his Wanderjahre (or Walz), that is, wandering about and working here and there, travelling with companions, and students, for five years. He worked at his craft in many towns, including Regensburg, Passau, Salzburg, Munich, Osnabrück, Lübeck, and Leipzig.
1513 he ended in a small town of Wels in Austria, where he lived in retirement, devoting himself to the cultivation of the fine arts. The Emperor Maximilian I chanced to pass through this town with a brilliant retinue, and the young poet allowed himself to be carried away by the splendor of the court. The prince placed him in the halls of the palace of Insbruck. Later Hans Sachs quit the court and went to Schatz and Munich.
wn.com/Hans_Sachs -
Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz (pronounced: [ɛktɔʁ bɛʁˈljoːz]; 11 December 1803 – 8 March 1869) was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts (Requiem). Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a conductor, he performed several concerts with more than 1,000 musicians. He also composed around 50 songs. His influence was critical for the further development of Romanticism, especially in composers like Richard Wagner, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Franz Liszt, Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler and many others.
Hector Berlioz was born in France at La Côte-Saint-André in the département of Isère, near Grenoble. His father, a respected provincial physician and scholar, was responsible for much of the young Berlioz's education. His father, Louis-Joseph Berlioz, was an atheist, with a liberal outlook; his mother, Marie-Antoinette, was an orthodox Roman Catholic. He had five siblings in all, three of whom did not survive to adulthood. The other two, Nanci and Adèle, remained close to Berlioz throughout his life.
wn.com/Hector_Berlioz -
Hector Dufranne
Hector Dufranne (25 October 1870 – 4 May 1951) was a Belgian operatic bass-baritone who enjoyed a long career that took him to opera houses throughout Europe and the United States for more than four decades. Admired for both his singing and his acting, Dufranne appeared in a large number of world premieres, most notably the role Golaud in the original production of Claude Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande in 1902, which he went on to sing 120 times at that house. He had an excellent singing technique which maintained the quality of his voice even into the latter part of his career. His wide vocal range and rich resonant voice enabled him to sing a variety of roles which encompassed French, German, and Italian opera.
Dufranne was born in Mons. He studied at the Brussels Conservatory with Désirée Demest before making his professional opera debut in 1896 at La Monnaie as Valentin in Charles Gounod's Faust. He returned to that opera house several times to sing such roles as Grymping in Vincent d'Indy's Fervaal (1897), Alberich in Richard Wagner's Das Rheingold (1898), Thomas in Jan Blockx's Thyl Uylenspiegel (1900), Thoas in Christoph Willibald Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride (1902), the Innkeeper in Engelbert Humperdinck's Königskinder (1912), and Rocco in Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari's I gioielli della Madonna (1913).
wn.com/Hector_Dufranne -
Heinrich Schlusnus
Heinrich Schlusnus (August 6, 1888 – June 18, 1952) was Germany's foremost lyric baritone of the period between World War I and World War II. He sang opera and lieder with equal distinction.
A native of Braubach, Schlusnus studied with voice teachers in Berlin and Frankfurt before making his debut at Hamburg's opera house in 1915. Schlusnus sang at Nuremberg from 1915 to 1917 and at the prestigious Berlin State Opera from 1917 until 1951. He was engaged by the Chicago Opera for its 1927-28 season and appeared at the Bayreuth Festival in 1933.
During his highly acclaimed tenure at Berlin, Schlusnus established himself as Germany's greatest performer of Verdi's baritone roles and, according to most critics, no subsequent German-speaking baritone has matched his supremacy in this field. Schlusnus excelled in the lighter Wagnerian parts, too, and in operatic works by other German composers.
Furthermore, Schlusnus earned critical renown as a concert artist and lieder singer despite facing stiff competition on the recital platform (and the operatic stage) from such outstanding rival baritones as Herbert Janssen, Willi Domgraf-Fassbaender, Gerhard Hüsch, Karl Hammes, Rudolf Bockelmann and Karl Schmitt-Walter. As an interpreter of lieder he often performed with the German pianist Sebastian Peschko.
wn.com/Heinrich_Schlusnus -
Herbert Janssen
Herbert Janssen (Cologne, September 22, 1892 – June 3, 1965 in New York) was a leading German operatic baritone who had an international career in Europe and the United States.
Janssen came from a wealthy, music-loving family and received his first singing lessons in his early youth. He grew up in the family's castle on the Rhine, which was filled with magnificent art. His family wanted him to study law for the benefit of the family business. They disowned him upon discovering that he had used his law school tuition to study singing instead of law. He did, in fact, study law before deciding to commit to a professional singing career. The night he made his debut at the Berlin Stadstoper, a 12' Bosendorfer concert grand piano was delivered to the opera house with a card saying "welcome back to the family". He returned the piano to his family and went on to sing everywhere to great acclaim.
In 1922, Janssen was offered his first contract at the Berlin State Opera, starting with small roles but rising in status quickly. A year later, during the 1923-24 Berlin season, he appeared for the first time as Wolfram in Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser, a role that would become one of his trademarks.
wn.com/Herbert_Janssen -
Hermann Prey
Hermann Prey (11 July 1929 – 22 July 1998) was a German lyric baritone, best known for his lieder renditions and for light comic roles in opera.
Hermann Prey was born in Berlin and grew up in Germany. He was scheduled to be drafted when World War II ended. He studied voice at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin and won the prize of the Frankfurt contest of the Hessischer Rundfunk in 1952.
He began to sing in song recitals and made his operatic debut the next year in Wiesbaden. He joined the Staatsoper, where he sang until 1960. During his last years in Hamburg, he also made frequent guest appearances elsewhere, including the Salzburg Festival.
He sang frequently at the Metropolitan Opera between 1960 and 1970 and made his Bayreuth debut in 1965. Although he often sang Verdi early in his career, he later concentrated more on Mozart and Richard Strauss. Prey was well known for playing Figaro (Mozart and Rossini), but he played other Mozart roles at least equally often, particularly Papageno and Guglielmo. He also played, and recorded, the Count in The Marriage of Figaro. He is regarded by many as the best Eisenstein in Die Fledermaus operetta.
wn.com/Hermann_Prey -
Hermann Uhde
Hermann Uhde (July 20, 1914–October 10, 1965) was a German Wagnerian baritone. He was born in Bremen and died on stage of a heart attack during a performance in Copenhagen.
He studied in his hometown, where he gave his début in 1936. During the war, he sang in Munich and at the opera of The Hague (then occupied by German troops). He sang at the Salzburg Festival from 1949 on (singing the role of Kreon in the premiere of Carl Orff's Antigonae), at the Bayreuth Festival from 1951 on and at the Metropolitan Opera from 1955 to 1964.
He began as a low, dark bass, and later moved up to baritone. He continued singing low bass roles occasionally, such as the Grand Inquisitor from Don Carlos.
The cutting quality of his voice and diction lead to him being cast in villainous roles at the Bayreuth Festival, such as Telramund and Klingsor, or in morally ambiguous roles such as Wotan, Gunther or the title role in Flying Dutchman. In spite of being a famous singer, he often also sang small roles such as Donner in Das Rheingold, Melot in Tristan und Isolde, the Grand Inquisitor in Don Carlos, and Shchelkalov in Boris Godunov. In the United States, he created a sensation at the Metropolitan Opera in his debut title role as Wozzeck, with Eleanor Steber singing Marie.
wn.com/Hermann_Uhde -
Ingvar Wixell
Ingvar Wixell (May 7, 1931 – October 8, 2011) was a Swedish baritone who had an active international career in operas and concerts from 1955 to 2003. He mostly sang roles from the Italian repertory, and, according to The New York Times, "was best known for his steady-toned, riveting portrayals of the major baritone roles of Giuseppe Verdi — among them Rigoletto, Simon Boccanegra, Amonasro in Aida and Germont in La Traviata.
Ingvar Wixell was born in Luleå in 1931. He made his debut in 1955 as Papageno in Mozart's The Magic Flute at the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm where he was member of the company until 1967.
He made his British debut during the Royal Swedish Opera's visit to Covent Garden in 1960, and sang Guglielmo at Glyndebourne and at the Proms in 1962. For the Royal Opera, London he sang Boccanegra in 1972. In America he appeared at San Francisco Opera (Belcore, 1972) and the Metropolitan Opera (Rigoletto, 1973).
He was engaged at the Deutsche Oper Berlin 1967 where he was a member for more than 30 years. At Bayreuth he sang the Herald in Lohengrin (1971).
wn.com/Ingvar_Wixell -
Jacques Jansen
Jacques Jansen (born Jacques Toupin, Paris, 22 November 1913, died Paris, 13 March 2002) was a French baryton-martin singer, particularly associated with the role of Pelléas but also active in operetta and on the concert platform, and later as a teacher.
Jansen had a wide musical and artistic education; after studying the violin in Paris, he took lessons in solfège and bassoon at the conservatoire in Tours, where he also pursued courses in fine arts.
Having taken vocal lessons with Charles Panzéra, from 1938 he studied under Claire Croiza and Georges Viseur (solfège) at the Paris Conservatoire. He also took classes with René Simon and Louis Jouvet and won prizes which might have allowed to followed a career in acting. In 1939 he sang the fountain scene and the tower scene of Claude Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande with the Orchestre National de France under Inghelbrecht, an experience which left him overwhelmed with joy.
He made his debut as Pelléas at the Grand Théâtre de Genève in 1941.
wn.com/Jacques_Jansen -
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach (20 June 1819 – 5 October 1880) was a German-born French composer, cellist and impresario of the romantic period. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr. and Arthur Sullivan. His best-known works were continually revived during the 20th century, and many of his operettas continue to be staged in the 21st. The Tales of Hoffman remains part of the standard opera repertory.
Born in Cologne, the son of a synagogue cantor, Offenbach showed early musical talent. At the age of 14, he was accepted as a student at the Paris Conservatoire but found academic study unfulfilling and left after a year. From 1835 to 1855 he earned his living as a cellist, achieving international fame, and as a conductor. His ambition, however, was to compose comic pieces for the musical theatre. Finding the management of Paris's Opéra-Comique company uninterested in staging his works, in 1855 he leased a small theatre in the Champs-Élysées. There he presented a series of his own small-scale pieces, many of which became popular.
wn.com/Jacques_Offenbach -
James Westman
James Westman (born September 16, 1972) is a Canadian baritone known for his interpretation of the Verdi, Puccini and bel canto operatic repertoire, and particularly his signature role of Germont in La traviata, which he has sung in over 140 performances, with opera companies such as San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, Florida Grand Opera, Graz Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, Opéra de Montréal, Canadian Opera Company, Boston Lyric Opera, Cologne Opera, Vancouver Opera, English National Opera, San Diego Opera, Dallas Opera, and Opera Theatre of St. Louis. On January 29, 2011 Mr. Westman created the lead role of Sandy Keith In the world premiere of Bramwell Tovey's The Inventor. As a recitalist, he has performed for the Marilyn Horne Foundation, Aldeburgh Connection, Saito Kinen Festival in Japan, Stratford Summer Music, British Broadcasting Corporation, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Westman first came to attention at the age of twelve when he was the first boy soprano to perform and record Mahler 4th Symphony with Benjamin Zander and the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra in 1984.James Westman is regularly featured as the Anthem singer for the Toronto Maple Leafs and numerous other NHL franchises. Four of James Westman's recordings have been nominated for a Juno Award.
wn.com/James_Westman -
Jean Périer
Jean (Alexis) Périer (2 February 1869, Paris – 3 November 1954) was a French operatic baritone and actor. Although he sang principally within the operetta repertoire, Périer did portray a number of opera roles; mostly within operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Giacomo Puccini. His career was almost entirely centered in Paris and he had a long association with the Opéra-Comique. He sang in a large number of world premieres, most notably originating the role of Pelléas in Claude Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande in 1902. In addition to his opera career, Périer appeared in several films between 1900 and 1938.
Jean Périer was born in Paris, the son of Belgian parents. His father was an opera singer and repetiteur. After initially working at the Credit Lyonnais, he became a pupil of Émile-Alexandre Taskin (opéra comique) and Romain Bussine (singing) at the Paris Conservatoire, winning first prizes in both in 1892. He made his debut as Monostatos in Mozart's The Magic Flute at the Opéra-Comique later that year on 16 December. He continued to perform at that opera house until 1920, with the exception of the years 1894 through 1900 when he principally sang at the Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens and other Parisian theatres specializing in operetta.
wn.com/Jean_Périer -
Jean-Baptiste Faure
Jean-Baptiste Faure (15 January 1830 – 9 November 1914) was a celebrated French operatic baritone and an art collector of great significance. He also composed a number of classical songs.
Faure was born in Moulins. A choirboy in his youth, he entered the Paris Conservatory in 1851 and made his operatic debut the following year at the Opéra-Comique, as Pygmalion in Victor Massé's Galathée. He remained at the Opéra-Comique for over seven years, creating the Marquis d'Erigny in Auber's Manon Lescaut (1856) and Hoël in Meyerbeer's Le pardon de Ploërmel (1859; later known as Dinorah), among seven premieres at that house.
He debuted at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, in 1860 as Hoël, and at the Paris Opera in 1861. He would sing at the Opera every season until 1869 and then again in 1872-76 and 1878. In addition, he continued to perform off and on in London until 1877 at venues such as Her Majesty's Theatre and the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.
Among the many operas in which he appeared in Paris were Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Don Giovanni as well as L'étoile du nord, Les Huguenots and La favorite.
wn.com/Jean-Baptiste_Faure -
Jean-Baptiste Lully
Jean-Baptiste de Lully (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃batist də lyˈli]; Italian: Giovanni Battista Lulli; 28 November 1632 – 22 March 1687) was an Italian-born French composer who spent most of his life working in the court of Louis XIV of France. He is considered the chief master of the French Baroque style. Lully disavowed any Italian influence in French music of the period. He became a French subject in 1661.
Lully, son of a working-class miller, was born in Florence, Italy. Lully had little education, but he learned basic techniques on the guitar, originally taught by a Franciscan friar of Florence. Later in France, he learned how to play the violin, and to dance. In 1646, he was discovered by Roger de Lorraine, the chevalier de Guise, son of Charles, Duke of Guise, and was taken to France, where he entered the services of Mademoiselle de Montpensier (la Grande Mademoiselle) as a scullery-boy and Italian-language teacher. With the help of this princess, his talent increased. He studied the theory of music under Nicolas Métru. It has been said that a scurrilous song on his patroness (the doggerel he set to music refers to a "sigh" she produced while at stool) resulted in his dismissal. It is far more likely that he did not want to moulder out in the provinces with the exiled princess.[citation needed]
wn.com/Jean-Baptiste_Lully -
Jean-Blaise Martin
Jean-Blaise Martin, full name Nicolas Jean-Blaise Martin (February 24, 1768, Paris - October 28, 1837, Tourzel-Ronzières) was a French opera singer whose tessitura lay between tenor and baritone, which became later known as "baryton-martin".
Jean-Blaise Martin began singing publicly as a child, before his voice broke. He made his professional operatic debut in 1789, at the Théâtre Feydeau, in Paris, in a parody called Le Marquis de Tulipano. He then studied with Madame Dugazon, and made his debut at the Opéra-Comique in 1794, and sang there until 1823. He became a member of the administrative comity of this theatre in 1801. He also taught at the "Conservatoire de Musique" of Paris, from 1825 to 1837.
He composed one opéra comique, Les oiseaux de mer, produced at the Théâtre Feydeau in 1796.
During his career, he created some 15 roles in operas by Nicolas Dalayrac, François Devienne, André Grétry, Étienne Méhul, Nicolas Isouard, Ferdinando Paer, etc.
Martin's voice was described as a "ténor grave et sombre", meaning a deep-voiced dark tenor, or as a "baryton aigu et clair", meaning a clear-voiced high baritone; the compass was E flat to a, with a falsetto extension to a'. His vocal type became known as "baryton-martin", most often found in French operetta. Modern example of this voice type were French baritone Michel Dens, or closer to us Bernard Sinclair, who can be heard in a few operetta recordings such as La fille de Madame Angot, Les cloches de Corneville, and Valses de Vienne.
wn.com/Jean-Blaise_Martin -
Johann Michael Vogl
Johann Michael Vogl (August 10, 1768 – November 19, 1840), was an Austrian baritone singer and composer. Though famous in his day, he is remembered mainly for his close professional relationship and friendship with composer Franz Schubert.
Vogl was born in Steyr. As a young man he enrolled at the Gymnasium at Kremsmünster, where he studied languages, philosophy, and sang in several musical productions by his friend Franz Süßmayr (the same man who completed Mozart's Requiem). In 1786 Vogl went to Vienna to study, and later to practice law. In 1795 he debuted at the Vienna Hofoper, and quickly attracted a following for both his acting capability and the beauty of his voice.
In 1813, Franz Schubert attended a performance of Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride in which Vogl sang the role of Orestes; Schubert never forgot the experience and determined to write for Vogl. The following year, when Vogl sang the role of Pizarro at the premiere of the final version of Beethoven's Fidelio, it is said that the 17-year-old Schubert actually sold his schoolbooks in order to afford a ticket.
wn.com/Johann_Michael_Vogl -
John Charles Thomas
John Charles Thomas (September 6, 1891 – December 13, 1960) was a popular American opera, operetta and concert baritone.
John Charles Thomas was born in Meyersdale, Pennsylvania. He was the son of a Methodist minister of Welsh descent while his mother, of German immigrant stock, had been an amateur singer. After studying initially for a medical career, Thomas won a scholarship to the Peabody Institute in Baltimore in 1910. He remained there for two years, receiving vocal tuition from Adelin Fermin.
In 1912, Thomas left the Peabody and toured briefly with a musical troupe. He then went to live in New York City, where he performed with a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta company before being contracted by the Shubert brothers to perform in the show The Peasant Girl, which opened in March 1913. For the next nine years, he starred in a series of hit Broadway musicals including Her Soldier Boy, Maytime, Naughty Marietta, and Apple Blossoms (with Fred and Adele Astaire).
Thomas sang in a concert performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's opera Sadko at New York's Carnegie Hall in December 1924. His debut in a fully staged opera occurred in March 1925, as Amonasro in a production of Verdi's Aida, presented by the semi-professional Washington National Opera.
wn.com/John_Charles_Thomas -
John Forsell
John Forsell, born Carl Johan Jacob Forsell, (6 November 1868 - 30 May 1941), was a prominent Swedish baritone, opera administrator and teacher of voice. He was the leading baritone of the Royal Swedish Opera (RSO) from 1896–1918, and thereafter sang roles periodically with the company until his last stage performance in 1938. From 1923-1939 he served as the director of the RSO. He also sang leading roles as a guest artist with opera companies internationally, drawing particular acclaim for his portrayal of the title character in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Don Giovanni.
In 1899, Forsell was awarded the Litteris et Artibus and, a decade later, he was named a Hovsångare. The Royal Swedish Academy of Music awarded him membership in 1906.
Born in Stockholm, Forsell was the son of Carl August Forsell, a sea captain, and Axeline Forsell (née Åberg). Before his singing career, he served in the Swedish Army; becoming a second lieutenant in 1890 and lieutenant in 1896. In 1897 he requested and was granted an honorable dismissal from the army, but continue to serve as a member of the Uppland Regiment reserves through 1901.
wn.com/John_Forsell -
José van Dam
Joseph, Baron van Damme (born 25 August 1940 in Brussels), known as José van Dam, is a Belgian bass-baritone.
At the age of 17, he entered the Brussels Royal Conservatory and studied with Frederic Anspach. A year later, he graduated with diplomas and first prizes in voice and opera performance. He made his opera début as the music teacher Don Basilio in Gioacchino Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia at the Paris Opera in 1961, and remained in the company until 1965, when he sang his first major role, Escamillo from Bizet's Carmen. He then sang for two seasons at Geneva, La Scala, Covent Garden, and in Paris. At Geneva, Van Dam sang in the première of Milhaud's La mère coupable in 1966. Lorin Maazel heard van Dam and invited him to record Ravel’s L’heure espagnole with him for Deutsche Grammophon. In 1967, Maazel asked him to join the Deutsche Oper in Berlin.
Van Dam has performed at L’Opéra de Paris, Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera, Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Vienna State Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, the Salzburg Festival, and festivals in Aix-en-Provence and Orange, France.
wn.com/José_van_Dam -
Juan Pons
Joan Pons Álvarez (Ciutadella, Spain, August 8, 1946), is a Spanish operatic baritone, known internationally as Juan Pons.
With his outstandingly successful international début in 1980 at the Teatro alla Scala of Milan with Falstaff, staged by Giorgio Strehler and conducted by Lorin Maazel, Juan Pons has revealed himself as one of the most famous baritones worldwide. Since then, he has been a constant guest of the most important theatres all over the world, La Scala of Milan, the Metropolitan Opera House of New York, the Vienna Staatsoper, Covent Garden in London, the Opéra of Paris, Zürich, the Liceo in Barcelona and the Arena of Verona.
His repertoire includes all the main baritone roles. Besides Falstaff, a role he played in 1993 at the La Scala under Riccardo Muti on the occasion of the centennial anniversary of its first performance, he has interpreted many of Verdi's most important baritone roles in Il trovatore, Ernani, Un ballo in maschera, Rigoletto, La forza del destino, La traviata, Simon Boccanegra, and Macbeth. He has performed in Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana and Puccini's Tosca, Gianni Schicchi, Il tabarro, La fanciulla del West and Madama Butterfly.
wn.com/Juan_Pons -
Jules Massenet
Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet (French pronunciation: [ʒyl emil fʁedeʁik masnɛ]) (May 12, 1842 – August 13, 1912) was a French composer best known for his operas. His compositions were very popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and he ranks as one of the greatest melodists of his era. Soon after his death, Massenet's style went out of fashion, and many of his operas fell into almost total oblivion. Apart from Manon and Werther, his works were rarely performed. However, since the mid-1970s, many operas of his such as Thaïs and Esclarmonde have undergone periodic revivals.
Massenet was born in Montaud, then an outlying hamlet and now a part of the city of Saint-Étienne, in the Loire. When he was six, his family moved to Paris due to his father's ill-health. There his mother (Adélaïde Massenet, née Royer; her husband's second wife) started taking piano pupils. She also taught Jules so well that at the age of 11 he was able to enter the Paris Conservatoire. He was still a student when his family moved from Paris to Chambéry, but Jules returned to Paris after a few months, living with a married member of his father's family by his first wife. To support himself during his studies, he worked as timpanist for six years at the Théâtre Lyrique, playing also other percussion instruments in other theatres, and working as a pianist in the Café de Belleville.
wn.com/Jules_Massenet -
Lawrence Tibbett
Lawrence Mervil Tibbett (November 16, 1896 – July 15, 1960) was a famous American opera singer and recording artist who also performed as a film actor and radio personality. A baritone, he sang with the New York Metropolitan Opera company more than 600 times from 1923 to 1950. He performed diverse musical theatre roles, ranging from Iago in Met productions of Othello to Captain Hook in Peter Pan in a touring show.
Lawrence Tibbett was born Lawrence Mervil Tibbet, (with a single "t") on November 16, 1896 in Bakersfield, California. His father was a part-time deputy sheriff, killed in a shootout with desperado Jim McKinney in 1903. Tibbett grew up in Los Angeles, earning money by singing in church choirs and at funerals. He graduated from Manual Arts High School in 1915. A year later he met his future wife, Grace Mackay Smith, who rented a room in his mother's house. During World War I he served in the Merchant Marine, after which he found employment singing as prologue to silent movies at the Grauman "Million Dollar" Theater in downtown Los Angeles.
wn.com/Lawrence_Tibbett -
Leo Nucci
Leo Nucci (born April 16, 1942) is an Italian operatic baritone, particularly suited to Verdi roles.
Born at Castiglione dei Pepoli, near Bologna, he studied with Giuseppe Marchese and made his stage debut in Spoleto, as Figaro in Il barbiere di Siviglia, in 1967, he then joined the chorus of La Scala in Milan, and made his solo debut there in 1975, again as Figaro.
His career quickly took an international turn with debut at the Royal Opera House in London, as Miller in Luisa Miller, in 1978, and at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, as Renato/Ancharstrom in Un ballo in maschera, in 1980. Renato was also his debut role at the Paris Opéra in 1981, and the Salzburg Festival in 1989, under Herbert Von Karajan. His career is remembered for famous performances in the opera world, including works with Luciano Pavarotti, Joan Sutherland, Placido Domingo and others.
His repertoire encompasses the entire Italian repertory from bel canto to verismo, but his sonorous voice, secure technique and dramatic abilities are best displayed in Verdi - notably as Rigoletto, Macbeth, Count di Luna, Giorgo Germont, Rodrigo, Amonasro, Iago, and Falstaff. He has sung the role of Rigoletto alone more than 400 times.
wn.com/Leo_Nucci -
Leonard Warren
Leonard Warren (April 21, 1911 – March 4, 1960) was an American opera singer. A baritone, he was a leading artist for many years with the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
Born Leonard Warenoff in New York to Russian Jewish immigrant parents, Warren was first employed in his father's fur business. In 1935, he joined the chorus at Radio City Music Hall. In 1938, he entered the Metropolitan Opera Auditions of the Air. Despite the fact Warren was obviously a novice, his natural gifts were apparent, and he was immediately given a contract. The Met sent him to Italy that summer with a stipend to study.
Returning to America, Warren made his concert debut at the Metropolitan Opera in excerpts from La traviata and Pagliacci during a concert in New York in November 1938. His formal operatic debut took place there in January 1939, when he sang Paolo in Simon Boccanegra. A recording contract with RCA Victor soon followed.
Warren later sang in San Francisco, Chicago, Mexico City, and Buenos Aires, he appeared at La Scala in Milan in 1953, and in 1958, he made a highly successful tour of the Soviet Union, but for most of his career he remained in New York and sang at the Met. Sometime during that period, he converted to Roman Catholicism, the faith of his wife Agatha, and became extremely devout.
wn.com/Leonard_Warren -
Levi Stubbs
Levi Stubbles (June 6, 1936 – October 17, 2008), better known by the stage name Levi Stubbs, was an American baritone singer, best known as the lead vocalist of the Motown R&B group Four Tops. He was also a voice artist, portraying villainous characters in films and animated television series, most famously having provided the voice of the alien plant Audrey II in the musical horror film Little Shop of Horrors, and Mother Brain in Captain N: The Game Master.
Born in Detroit in 1936, Levi Stubbs began his professional singing career with friends Abdul "Duke" Fakir, Renaldo "Obie" Benson and Lawrence Payton, forming a singing group called The Four Aims in 1954. Two years later, after having signed with Chess Records, the group changed their name to the Four Tops. The name change was meant to avoid confusion with the then-popular Ames Brothers. The Four Tops began as a supper-club act before signing to Motown Records in 1963. By the end of the decade, the Four Tops had over a dozen hits. The most popular of their hits (all of which featured Stubbs on lead vocals) include "Baby I Need Your Loving", "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)", "It's the Same Old Song", "Reach Out I'll Be There", "Standing in the Shadows of Love", "Bernadette", "Still Water (Love)", "Ain't No Woman (Like the One I've Got)" as well as the late hit "Loco In Acapulco". Although Stubbs was a natural baritone, most Four Tops' hits were written in a tenor range to give the lead vocals a sense of urgency.
wn.com/Levi_Stubbs -
Maria Callas
Maria Callas, Commendatore OMRI (Greek: Μαρία Κάλλας) (December 2, 1923 – September 16, 1977) was an American-born Greek soprano and one of the most renowned opera singers of the 20th century. She combined an impressive bel canto technique, a wide-ranging voice and great dramatic gifts. An extremely versatile singer, her repertoire ranged from classical opera seria to the bel canto operas of Donizetti, Bellini and Rossini; further, to the works of Verdi and Puccini; and, in her early career, to the music dramas of Wagner. Her remarkable musical and dramatic talents led to her being hailed as La Divina.
Born in New York City and raised by an overbearing mother, she received her musical education in Greece and established her career in Italy. Forced to deal with the exigencies of wartime poverty and with myopia that left her nearly blind onstage, she endured struggles and scandal over the course of her career. She turned herself from a heavy woman into a svelte and glamorous one after a mid-career weight loss, which might have contributed to her vocal decline and the premature end of her career. The press exulted in publicizing Callas's allegedly temperamental behaviour, her supposed rivalry with Renata Tebaldi and her love affair with Aristotle Onassis. Her dramatic life and personal tragedy have often overshadowed Callas the artist in the popular press. However, her artistic achievements were such that Leonard Bernstein called her "The Bible of opera"; and her influence was so enduring that, in 2006, Opera News wrote of her: "Nearly thirty years after her death, she's still the definition of the diva as artist—and still one of classical music's best-selling vocalists."
wn.com/Maria_Callas -
Mariano Stabile
Mariano Stabile (May 12, 1888, Palermo, Italy - January 11, 1968, Milan, Italy) was an Italian baritone, particularly associated with the Italian repertory, especially the role of Falstaff.
Stabile's vocal studies took place at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome with Antonio Cotogni, and he made his professional debut in Palermo, as Marcello in La bohème, in 1909. After singing throughout Italy, he appeared in Saint Petersburg in 1911, Buenos Aires in 1913, Barcelona in 1914, and made his debut at the Paris Opera in 1917, as Amonasro in Aida.
The turning point of his career came when Arturo Toscanini chose him for the title-role in Falstaff for the reopening of La Scala in 1921, a role that he would eventually sing an estimated 1200 times during his long career. He sang at La Scala until 1955, and among his other roles there were: Gérard, Scarpia, Iago, Malatesta, Dulcamara, Beckmesser, Schicchi. Also at La Scala, he created the title role of Respighi's Belfagor, in 1923. He also took part in the revival of Il turco in Italia, as Prosdocimo, in 1955, opposite Maria Callas.
wn.com/Mariano_Stabile -
Mario Ancona
Mario Ancona (February 28, 1860 – February 23, 1931), was a leading Italian baritone and master of bel canto singing. He appeared at some of the most important opera houses in Europe and America during what is commonly referred to as the "Golden Age of Opera".
Ancona was born into a middle-class Jewish family at Livorno, Tuscany, on February 28, 1860. After embarking on a business career he decided to study voice with a local singing teacher named Matteini in his native city of Livorno. Later, he took lessons from Giuseppe Cima in Milan.
Ancona is reputed to have made his debut as an amateur singer as far back as 1880; but according to The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera—from which many of the ensuing appearance dates, venues and career highlights are taken—his earliest known professional appearance in an opera did not occur until 1889, when he sang the role of Scindia in Massenet's Le roi de Lahore in Trieste. Not long afterwards, he appeared in another Massenet opera, Le Cid, at Italy's principal theatre—La Scala, Milan. His arrival at La Scala so soon after his debut reflects the excellence of the technical grounding that he must have received as an amateur performer.
wn.com/Mario_Ancona -
Mario Sammarco
(Giuseppe) Mario Sammarco (December 13, 1868, although some sources say 1867 - January 24, 1930) was an Italian operatic baritone noted for his histrionic ability.
Sammarco was born in Palermo, Sicily, and studied locally with Antonio Cantelli. He made his operatic début in Palermo as Valentine in Faust in 1888. He subsequently sang to acclaim in Milan (at La Scala, Italy's most celebrated theatre), Buenos Aires and London. Between 1904 and 1919 he appeared intermittently, in 26 different roles, at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
In New York City, he was hired by Oscar Hammerstein I for his Manhattan Opera Company as a replacement for the great French singing-actor Maurice Renaud. He sang with the Manhattan company in 1908-1910, becoming its principal Italian baritone, but he never 'graduated' to the rival Metropolitan Opera.
Sammarco next joined the Chicago–Philadelphia opera company. His career there continued smoothly enough until 1913 when he encountered a disapproving Mary Garden in a Chicago production of Tosca. The soprano requested that he be replaced; but after he named some of his former distinguished (and uncomplaining) Tosca partners, notably Emmy Destinn, the performances proceeded to be given to critical success.
wn.com/Mario_Sammarco -
Matthias Goerne
Matthias Goerne (born 1967) is a German baritone.
Born in Weimar, he studied with Hans-Joachim Beyer, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.
His repertoire spans a wide range of music, from baroque to contemporary, but above all he is a celebrated lieder singer. His discography includes award-winning recordings of Mahler and Schubert song cycles.
Goerne is especially known for his beauty of tone, thoughtful phrasing, commitment to legato singing and impeccable German diction.
He is a recipient of the Wigmore Hall, London, medal.
wn.com/Matthias_Goerne -
Mattia Battistini
Mattia Battistini (27 February 1856 – 7 November 1928) was an Italian operatic baritone. He became internationally famous due to the beauty of his voice and the virtuosity of his singing technique, and he earned the sobriquet "King of Baritones".
Battistini was born in Rome and brought up largely at Collebaccaro di Contigliano, a village near Rieti, where his parents had an estate. The Battistinis were ancestrally from Rieti, the ancient capital of the Sabines, and Mattia Battistini always looked like an ancient Roman, with his imposing physique, high forehead and monumental nose. (See photograph, top right.)
They were a well-to-do family, long established in the field of medicine. His grandfather, Giovanni, and uncle, Raffaele, were personal physicians to the Pope and his knighted father, Cavaliere Luigi Battistini, was a professor of anatomy at the University of Rome. They preferred the future baritone to take up a career in medicine or law, and sent him to old and exclusive preparatory schools (the Collegio Bandinelli and later the Istituto dell' Apollinare) where he gained a classical education.
wn.com/Mattia_Battistini -
Nathan Gunn
Nathan T. Gunn (born November 26, 1970) is an American operatic baritone.
Gunn was born in South Bend, Indiana.
He has appeared in many of world's well-known opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, Seattle Opera, Dallas Opera, Opera Company of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh Opera, Royal Opera House (Covent Garden), Paris Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, Glyndebourne Festival, and the Theatre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels. He has also appeared at the Mostly Mozart Festival.
While he is noted for his vocal prowess and acting, Gunn has received almost more fame for his physique, a peculiar feat for an opera singer. In 2008, he was featured in People magazine's list of "The Sexiest Men Alive."
Was was appointed a tenured professor of voice at the University of Illinois, beginning in the fall semester of 2007. His wife, Julie Jordan Gunn, who holds a doctorate in accompaniment from University of Illinois, was also appointed an associate professor in accompaniment at the University of Illinois.
wn.com/Nathan_Gunn -
Nicolae Herlea
Nicolae Herlea (b. 28 August 1927, Bucharest) is a Romanian operatic baritone, particularly associated with the Italian repertory, especially the role of Rossini's Figaro, which he sang around 550 times during his career.
He studied at the Bucharest Music Conservatory with Aurelius Costescu-Duca, and later at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome with Giorgio Favaretto. In 1951, he won first prizes in international singing contests in Geneva, Prague, and Brussels. He made his stage debut that same year at the National Opera of Bucharest as Silvio in Pagliacci, quickly establishing himself as the principal baritone there.
In 1958, he began appearing abroad, particularly at the Bolshoi in Moscow, to where he regularly returned. He also made guest appearances at London's Royal Opera House (1961), La Scala in Milan (1963) and the Metropolitan Opera in New York (1964–67), and also performed at the Liceo in Barcelona, the Berlin Staatsoper, the Vienna State Opera, the Salzburg Festival, La Monnaie in Brussels, and in the opera houses of Prague and Budapest.
wn.com/Nicolae_Herlea -
Olaf Bär
Olaf Bär (born December 19, 1957 in Dresden) is a German operatic baritone.
Bär received his musical training in his home city of Dresden, studying at the city's Hochschule für Musik. His career has concentrated on lieder and on the lyric baritone roles of the operatic repertoire. Many of his early lieder performances were accompanied by the late Geoffrey Parsons.
His operatic debut was in 1981 in Dresden, and he was a member of that city's opera company (Semperoper) from 1985 to 1991. His voice has been compared favorably with that of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.
wn.com/Olaf_Bär -
Paolo Silveri
Paolo Silveri (b. Ofena, December 28, 1913 - d. Rome, July 3, 2001) was an Italian baritone, particularly associated with the Italian repertory, one of the finest Verdi baritones of his time.
Silveri studied first in Capestrano (L'Aquila) then in Rome with Perugini and later with Riccardo Stracciari and the bass Giulio Cirino (father of Silveri's wife Delia), making his debut there as a bass in 1939.
After further studies, he made new debut as a baritone in 1944, as Germont in Rome.
Thereafter, he rapidly sang throughout Italy, notably at the San Carlo in Naples, and La Scala in Milan, debut as de Luna in 1949. Also appeared at the Royal Opera House in London, in 1946, and at the Paris Opéra, debut in 1951, as Renato.
He made his debut in the USA at the Metropolitan Opera in 1950, as Don Giovanni with Fritz Reiner conductor, he also sang Rigoletto and Posa there.
He attempted the role of Otello in 1959, but quickly reverted to baritone roles. He was especially noted for his great interpretations of Verdi operas and some other roles as Scarpia (Tosca), Figaro (Il Barbiere di Siviglia), Guglielmo Tell and Don Govanni.
wn.com/Paolo_Silveri -
Pasquale Amato
Pasquale Amato (21 March 1878 – 12 August 1942) was an outstanding Italian operatic baritone. Amato enjoyed an international reputation but attained the peak of his fame in New York City, where he sang with the Metropolitan Opera from 1908 until 1921.
Amato was born in Naples and studied locally at the Conservatory of San Pietro a Majella under Beniamino Carelli and Vincenzo Lombardo (who also gave singing lessons to the great Neapolitan tenor Enrico Caruso). In 1900, he made his debut at the Teatro Bellini in Naples as Germont père in La traviata. Engagements followed in Genoa and Rome. Over the next few years he sang in Monte Carlo, Germany, parts of eastern Europe and Argentina. In 1904, he appeared at London's Royal Opera House with the Teatro di San Carlo Company; although well-received, he was not invited back.
He was engaged by La Scala, Milan, and sang there in 1907 under the baton of Arturo Toscanini. His voice had matured by now into a top-class instrument and he was praised for his versatility and artistic integrity. In 1913 he was accorded the honour of taking part in the Verdi centenary commemoration at the Busseto Theatre. He appeared at the commemoration in La traviata and Falstaff with Toscanini conducting. Other important operatic roles which Amato sang in Italy prior to World War I included Amonasro in Aida, Marcello in La bohème, the title part in Rigoletto, as well as Golaud in Pelléas et Mélisande, Kurwenal in Tristan und Isolde, Scarpia in Tosca and Barnaba in La Gioconda.
wn.com/Pasquale_Amato -
Paul Barroilhet
Paul-Bernard Barroilhet (22 September 1810 – April 1871) was a French operatic baritone.
Barroilhet was born in Bayonne. He studied at the Conservatoire de Paris and then with Davide Banderali in Milan. He began his career in Italy during the early 1830s, performing under the name Paolo Barroilhet and making a name for himself as an exceptional singer, particularly in Naples.
He returned to France in 1840 to join the roster of artists at the Opéra National de Paris, where he performed under his birth name. However, he left the Paris Opera in 1847 after differences with the company's management. The by now wealthy Bairrolhet elected to withdraw completely from the stage and he found a new vocation as a painter and art collector. He came out of retirement briefly for appearances in Madrid in 1851–1852, performing Don Carlo in Ernani.
Barroilhet is best remembered today for originating roles in several operas by Gaetano Donizetti and Fromental Halévy. For Donizetti he created Eustachio de Saint-Pierre in L'assedio di Calais (1836), the Lord Duke of Nottingham in Roberto Devereux (1837), Alfonso XI of Castile in La favorite (1840), and Camoëns in Dom Sebastien (1843). The Halevy roles he created include King Lusignan in La reine de Chypre (1841), the title role in the premiere of Charles VI (1843) and Mirobolante in Le lazzarone, ou Le bien vient en dormant (1844).
wn.com/Paul_Barroilhet -
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith (16 November 1895 – 28 December 1963) was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.
Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt am Main, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child. He entered Frankfurt's Hoch’sche Konservatorium, where he studied violin with Adolf Rebner, as well as conducting and composition with Arnold Mendelssohn and Bernhard Sekles. At first he supported himself by playing in dance bands and musical-comedy groups. He became deputy leader of the Frankfurt Opera Orchestra in 1914, and was promoted to leader in 1917. He played second violin in the Rebner String Quartet from 1914. In 1921 he founded the Amar Quartet, playing viola, and extensively toured Europe.
In 1922, some of his pieces were played in the International Society for Contemporary Music festival at Salzburg, which first brought him to the attention of an international audience. The following year, he began to work as an organizer of the Donaueschingen Festival, where he programmed works by several avant garde composers, including Anton Webern and Arnold Schoenberg. From 1927 he taught composition at the Berliner Hochschule für Musik in Berlin. Hindemith wrote the music for Hans Richter's 1928 avant-garde film Ghosts Before Breakfast (Vormittagsspuk), although the score was subsequently lost, and he also acted in the film.
wn.com/Paul_Hindemith -
Paul Lhérie
Paul Lhérie (Lévy), (born Paris October 8, 1844, died Paris October 17, 1937) was a French tenor, then baritone, later a vocal teacher, most famous for creating the role of Don José in Bizet's Carmen.
After studying in Paris, Lhérie made his debut at the Opéra-Comique in 1866 as Méhul's Joseph. He created the role of Charles II in Massenet's Don César de Bazan in 1872, Kornélis in Camille Saint-Saëns's La princesse jaune in 1872, Benoît in Delibes's Le roi l’a dit in 1873, and Don José in Carmen by Bizet in 1875. Bizet and Lhérie became friends during the preparations for Carmen. They would swim together in the Seine during the singer's visits to the composer's house in Bougival.
He became a baritone in 1882, singing Posa in the first performance of the revised version of Verdi's Don Carlos at La Scala, Milan, two years later. He also spent time during the 1880s at Covent Garden in London, where he performed Zurga (in Les Pêcheurs de Perles), Rigoletto, Germont (La Traviata), Luna, and Alphonse (La favorite). He also sang Zurga and other roles in an Italian season at the Théâtre de la Gaîté in 1889.
wn.com/Paul_Lhérie -
Pavel Lisitsian
Pavel Gerasimovich Lisitsian (Russian: Павел Герасимович Лисициан) (November 6, 1911 – July 6, 2004) was a Soviet baritone opera singer who performed in the Bolshoi Opera, Moscow from 1940 until his retirement from stage in 1966.
He was born into an Armenian family living in the Russian city of Vladikavkaz, where his father was a mineworker. Pavel first worked in diamond drilling, then as a welder apprentice hoping to follow his father's steps. He first began to sing in a church choir before moving to Leningrad to study cello (1930).
As a strong-voiced soloist of a local amateur group he was commissioned to the Leningrad Conservatory.
He started his vocal career in the Maly Leningrad State Opera Theatre and then in the Yerevan Opera House, where he performed the leads for three years.
From 1940 to 1966 Pavel Lisitsian was the soloist of the Bolshoi Theatre and performed parts of Yeletsky, Onegin, Mazepa, and Robert (in Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades, Evgenie Onegin, Mazepa, and Iolanta respectively), Germont and Amonasro (in Verdi's Traviata and Aida), Escamilo (in Bizet’s Carmen), Tatul (Spendiarov’s Almast), Arshak II (Chuhadzhyan’s Arshak II), Napoleon (in Prokofiev's War and Peace), and others.
wn.com/Pavel_Lisitsian -
Peter Kajlinger
Peter Kajlinger (born 2 December 1964) is a Swedish operatic baritone. Kajlinger grew up in a family of musicians. He made his debut in La bohème at the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm at the age of 11.
He entered the College of Opera in Stockholm in 1989 and performed as Moralés (Carmen) and Leporello (Don Giovanni) at the Royal Swedish Opera. Upon graduation in 1992, he sang the role of Falstaff by Salieri at Drottningholm Palace Theatre. Pamela Rosenberg, then casting director of Staatsoper Stuttgart, noticed his performances as Leporello and Figaro and invited him to join the company. At Staatsoper Stuttgart, he sang more than twenty roles!
He performed as Figaro at GöteborgsOperan in 2000. He became a freelance singer in 2003 with recitals as Masetto (Don Giovanni), Michelotto (Die Gezeichneten), Antonio (Le Nozze di Figaro) at Staatsoper Stuttgart and as Don Carlo (La Forza del Destino) at Södertäljeoperan. Kajlinger originated the role of Mr. Verloc in Simon Wills' opera, The Secret Agent, in 2006 at Feldkircher Musikfestival.
wn.com/Peter_Kajlinger -
Piero Cappuccilli
Piero Cappuccilli (November 9, 1926 – July 11, 2005) was an Italian operatic baritone. Best known for his interpretations of Verdi roles, he was widely regarded as one of the finest Italian baritones of the second half of the 20th century. He was enormously admired within the field of opera for his rich and abundant voice, fine vocal technique and exceptional breath control. In the great Italian tradition he fused words and music into elegant phrases. He focused on Italian repertory, particularly the operas of Verdi, singing 17 major roles.
Born in Trieste, Cappuccilli originally intended to become an architect. He auditioned at a local opera house in 1949, where Luciano Donnaggio (a retired singer beginning a second career as a teacher) heard him and urged him to study. Cappuccilli was still reluctant, believing he had a better potential career as an architect, and even briefly discontinued his lessons, until Donnaggio's urging and the offer of free lessons persuaded him to resume studies in 1950. He studied with Luciano Donaggio in his native city. After encouragement from relatives decided to pursue a career in opera and made his stage debut there in 1951, singing small parts.
wn.com/Piero_Cappuccilli -
Pierre Bernac
Pierre Bernac (12 January 1899 – 17 October 1979) was a French baritone.
Born Pierre Bertin in Paris on January 12, 1899, he studied with Reinhold von Wahrlich in Salzburg. he came to music relatively late and gave his first recital in 1921.
He gave the first performances of Poulenc's Chansons gaillardes in 1926. He began appearing in recital with Poulenc as his accompanist in 1934 and they continued performing together until Bernac withdrew from performing in public about 1960. Poulenc wrote a majority of his songs for Bernac, including Tel jour, telle nuit and Calligrammes. He became the most renowned interpreter of the French art song.
Bernac recorded several of Poulenc's songs, accompanied by the composer on the piano, in 1947. These were released by EMI and RCA Victor on 78-rpm discs.
When his American debut, delayed by World War II, finally came in 1948, according to Allen Hughes of the New York Times:
He was also famous as a teacher. He taught in master classes and the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau and the École Normale de Musique de Paris. Musical Times called him "an outstanding teacher of song interpretation–visionary, precise, tireless and loving." His students include Gérard Souzay, Mattiwilda Dobbs, Elly Ameling, Jessye Norman, Bruno Laplante, Bernard Kruysen, Margreet Honig, Michel Piquemal, and Gerda Hartmann.
wn.com/Pierre_Bernac -
Pietro Mascagni
Pietro Antonio Stefano Mascagni (Italian pronunciation: [ˈpjɛːtro anˈtɔːnjo ˈsteːfano masˈkaɲɲi]; December 7, 1863 – August 2, 1945) was an Italian composer most noted for his operas. His 1890 masterpiece Cavalleria rusticana caused one of the greatest sensations in opera history and single-handedly ushered in the Verismo movement in Italian dramatic music. Though it has been stated that Mascagni, like Leoncavallo, was a "one-opera man" who could never repeat his first success, this is inaccurate. L'amico Fritz and Iris have been popular in Europe since their respective premieres. In fact, Mascagni himself claimed that at one point Iris was performed in Italy more often than Cavalleria (cf. Stivender).
Mascagni wrote fifteen operas, an operetta, several orchestral and vocal works, as well as songs and piano music. He enjoyed immense success during his lifetime, both as a composer and conductor of his own and other people's music. If he never repeated the international success of Cavalleria, it was probably because Mascagni refused to copy himself. The variety of styles in his operas — the Sicilian passion and warmth of Cavalleria, the exotic flavor of Iris, the idyllic breeze that ventilates the charming L'amico Fritz and Lodoletta, the Gallic chiaroscuro of Isabeau, the steely, Veristic power of Il piccolo Marat, the overripe postromanticism of the lush Parisina — demonstrate a versatility that surpasses even that of Puccini.
wn.com/Pietro_Mascagni -
Renato Bruson
Renato Bruson (born 13 January 1934) is an Italian operatic baritone. Bruson is widely considered one of the most important Verdi baritones of the late 20th and early 21st century. He was born in Granze near Padua, Italy.
Bruson's passion for music matured in the parish choir when he was a child. He began his music studies at the conservatory of Padua where he was awarded a scholarship that allowed him to attend the courses in the face of economic problems. He did not receive much support from his family, who considered him a good-for-nothing. In his own words: "They thought that I only wanted to study music because I had no desire to work. At that time, the general feeling where I lived was that if someone worked, they had a future, whereas those who studied, especially if they studied music, were considered failures who would never find their path in life." However, he could continue his studies with the help of the administration of the conservatory and the support of friends.
Bruson made his operatic debut as the Conte di Luna in Il trovatore at the Teatro Lirico Sperimentale in Spoleto in 1960. The following year he was Riccardo in I puritani at the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma in Rome. His first Metropolitan Opera appearance was as Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor in 1969. In 1970 he started his collaboration with conductor Riccardo Muti in Un ballo in maschera in Florence. He made his debut at La Scala in 1972 as Antonio in Donizetti's Linda di Chamonix, at the Edinburgh International Festival in 1972 as Ezio in Attila, at Covent Garden in 1975 in the role of Renato in Un ballo in maschera, substituting with great success for Piero Cappuccilli. He debuted at the Vienna State Opera in 1978 with Macbeth, with such a success that the prestigious Austrian theatre awarded him with the important title of Kammersänger. In the 1980s he turned to the 18th century with Mozart's Don Giovanni and to Italian verismo with Umberto Giordano's Andrea Chénier.
wn.com/Renato_Bruson -
Renato Zanelli
Renato Zanelli (April 1, 1892, Valparaiso - March 25, 1935, Santiago) was a Chilean operatic baritone and later tenor, particularly associated with heroic Italian and German roles, notably Verdi's Otello.
Born Renato Zanelli-Morales of Italian descent, he studied in Santiago with Angelo Querze, making his debut there as a baritone in 1916, as Valentin. He later sang such important baritone roles as Tonio, de Luna, and Renato.
His New York Metropolitan Opera debut came in 1919, as Amonasro. He remained there until 1923, singing most of the major Italian baritone parts.
Zanelli then left for Italy for further studies with Dante Lari and Fernando Tanara in Milan. His first appearance as a tenor occurred in 1924 at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, as Raoul. He went on to sing widely in Italy and South America in roles as diverse as Pollione, Don José, Andrea Chénier, Canio, Tristan and Siegmund.
He sang his first Otello in Turin in 1926, which also was his debut role at the Royal Opera House in London. His portrayal of Otello was notable for the intensity of its dramatic utterance. He took part in the first performance, in 1930, of Pizzetti's Lo straniero at Teatro dell'Opera di Roma.
wn.com/Renato_Zanelli -
Riccardo Stracciari
Riccardo Stracciari (June 26, 1875, Casalecchio di Reno - October 10, 1955, Rome) was a leading Italian baritone. His repertoire consisted mainly of Italian operatic works, with Rossini's Figaro and Verdi's Rigoletto becoming his signature roles during a long and distinguished career which stretched from 1899 to 1944.
Born near Bologna, Italy, Stracciari first sang in an operetta chorus during 1894. He then entered the Bologna Conservatory, undertaking vocal studies with Ulisse Masetti. He made his professional debut in 1899, at the Teatro Communale in Bologna, in Pesori's sacred work La risurrezione di Christo. The following year he made his operatic debut as Marcello in Puccini's La bohème in Rovigo. After appearing in various Italian opera houses, he made his debut at Italy's leading operatic venue, La Scala, Milan, in 1904.
Stracciari's career quickly became international, with debuts at the Royal Opera House in London in 1905, followed by his first appearance at the New York Metropolitan Opera on December 1, 1906, as Germont in La traviata with Marcella Sembrich and Enrico Caruso. During his two seasons at the Met, his roles included: Rigoletto, Ashton, Amonasro, Nélusko,Valentin, Marcello, Sharpless, Lescaut, Alfio,Tonio,and Di Luna. He also appeared with the Chicago Opera, the San Francisco Opera, the Paris Opéra, the Teatro Real in Madrid and the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires.
wn.com/Riccardo_Stracciari -
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss (11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and other orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, Also sprach Zarathustra, An Alpine Symphony, and Metamorphosen. Strauss was also a prominent conductor throughout Germany and Austria.
Strauss, along with Gustav Mahler, represents the late flowering of German Romanticism after Richard Wagner, in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined with an advanced harmonic style.
Strauss was born on 11 June 1864, in Munich, the son of Franz Strauss, who was the principal horn player at the Court Opera in Munich. In his youth, he received a thorough musical education from his father. He wrote his first composition at the age of six, and continued to write music almost until his death.
wn.com/Richard_Strauss -
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner (
/ˈvɑːɡnər/; German pronunciation: [ˈʁiçaʁt ˈvaːɡnɐ]; 22 May 1813 – 13 February 1883) was a German composer, conductor, theatre director and polemicist primarily known for his operas (or "music dramas", as he later called them). Wagner's compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for their complex texture, rich harmonies and orchestration, and the elaborate use of leitmotifs: musical themes associated with individual characters, places, ideas or plot elements. Unlike most other opera composers, Wagner wrote both the music and libretto for every one of his stage works. Perhaps the two best-known extracts from his works are the Ride of the Valkyries from the opera Die Walküre, and the Wedding March (Bridal Chorus) from the opera Lohengrin.
Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works such as The Flying Dutchman and Tannhäuser which were broadly in the romantic vein of Weber and Meyerbeer, Wagner transformed operatic thought through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk ("total work of art"). This would achieve the synthesis of all the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts and was announced in a series of essays between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realized this concept most fully in the first half of the monumental four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. However, his thoughts on the relative importance of music and drama were to change again, and he reintroduced some traditional operatic forms into his last few stage works, including Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
wn.com/Richard_Wagner -
Robert Merrill
Robert Merrill (June 4, 1917 – October 23, 2004) was an American operatic baritone, who was also active in the musical theatre circuit.
Merrill was born Moishe Miller, later known as Morris Miller, in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York, to tailor Abraham Miller, originally Milstein, and his wife Lillian, née Balaban, immigrants from Warsaw, Poland.
His mother claimed to have had an operatic and concert career in Poland (a fact denied by her son in his biographies) and encouraged her son to have early voice training: he had a tendency to stutter, which disappeared when singing. Merrill was inspired to pursue professional singing lessons when he saw the baritone Richard Bonelli singing Count Di Luna in a performance of Il Trovatore at the Metropolitan Opera, and paid for them with money earned as a semi-professional pitcher.[citation needed]
In his early radio appearances as a crooner he was sometimes billed as Merrill Miller. While singing at bar mitzvahs and weddings and Borscht Belt resorts, he met an agent, Moe Gale, who found him work at Radio City Music Hall and with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Arturo Toscanini. With Toscanini conducting, he eventually sang in two of the maestro's NBC broadcasts of famous operas, La traviata (with Licia Albanese, in 1946), and Un ballo in maschera (with Herva Nelli, in 1954). Both of those broadcasts were eventually released on both LP and CD. His ranking as an important NBC performer is evidenced by his inclusion in NBC's 1947 promotional book, NBC Parade of Stars: As Heard Over Your Favorite NBC Station, displaying Sam Berman's caricatures of leading NBC personalities.
wn.com/Robert_Merrill -
Rudolf Bockelmann
Rudolf Bockelmann (born 2 April 1892 in Bodenteich, died 9 October 1958 in Dresden) was a German dramatic baritone and Kammersänger. He built an international career as an outstanding Wagnerian singer but damaged his reputation during the 1930s by joining the Nazi Party.
Bockelmann, the son of a village schoolmaster, was born at Bodenteich near Celle. He studied philology and music at the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig. Soon after his graduation he volunteered as a soldier during World War I, and was wounded several times while fighting for his country. After the war he made his operatic debut in 1920 in Celle, and from 1921 to 1926 he sang as a member of the Oper Leipzig's company.
Bockelmann's opera career in Germany would hit its peak during the 1930s and last until the 1950s. At the height of his vocal powers, in 1932, he was engaged by the Berlin State Opera, remaining connected to the company until 1944. He sang often at Germany's Bayreuth Festival, too. His first Bayreuth appearance occurred in 1928, and he returned there regularly until 1942. Above all, he was famed for his performances of heroic baritone roles such as that of Wotan in Die Walküre and Das Rheingold. He was equally renowned for his assumption of the dramatically demanding part of Hans Sachs in The Mastersingers of Nuremberg.
wn.com/Rudolf_Bockelmann -
Ruggero Leoncavallo
Ruggero (or Ruggiero)Giacomo Maria Giuseppe Emmanuele Raffaele Domenico Vincenzo Francesco Donato Leoncavallo (Italian pronunciation: [rudˈdʒɛːro leoŋkaˈvallo]; 23 April 1857 – 9 August 1919) was an Italian opera composer. His two-act work Pagliacci remains one of the most popular works in the repertory, appearing as number 20 on the Operabase list of the most-performed operas worldwide.
The son of a judge, Leoncavallo was born in Naples on 23 April 1857. As child he moved with his father in the town of Montalto Uffugo in Calabria where Leoncavallo lived during his adolescence. He later returned to Naples and was educated at the city's San Pietro a Majella Conservatory. After some years spent teaching and in ineffective attempts to obtain the production of more than one opera, he saw the enormous success of Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana in 1890, and he wasted no time in producing his own verismo hit, Pagliacci. (According to Leoncavallo, the plot of this work had a real-life origin: he claimed it derived from a murder trial, in Montalto Uffugo, over which his father had presided.)
wn.com/Ruggero_Leoncavallo -
Sergei Leiferkus
Sergei Leiferkus (born April 4, 1946) is an operatic baritone from Russia, known for his dramatic technique and powerful voice particularly in Russian and Italian language repertoire. He is most notable for his roles as Scarpia in Tosca, Iago in Otello, Grand-prétre de Dagon in Samson et Dalila and Simon Boccanegra as the title role. Leiferkus was born in Leningrad (now known as St Petersburg), Russia. He studied music at the St. Petersburg conservatory.
In 1972, he made his debut with Maly Theatre of Leningrad and received recognition for Eugene Onegin, Iolanta, Barber of Seville and Don Giovanni. He joined Kirov Opera Company in 1977 performing in Prokofiev's War and Peace as Andrei. While at the Kirov Opera, Leiferkus's talent began to receive international reputation as a powerful singer and imaginative actor.
Leiferkus has toured most opera houses in the world including Royal Opera House, Vienna State Opera, Opéra Bastille in Paris, Teatro alla Scala, San Francisco Opera, Metropolitan Opera, Netherlands Opera, Teatro Colón, at the Edinburgh Festival, Bregenzer Festspiele, Glyndebourne and Salzburg Easter Festival. He has also worked with many notable conductors and orchestras including Georg Solti, James Levine, Claudio Abbado, Valery Gergiev, Bernard Haitink, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti and Seiji Ozawa with London Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra and Berlin Philharmonic.
wn.com/Sergei_Leiferkus -
Seymour Schwartzman
Seymour Schwartzman (December 7, 1930 – January 18, 2009) was an American cantor and opera singer. He was a principal baritone at New York City Opera where he sang over thirty roles and also performed internationally in opera houses and on the concert stage. Among the synagogues where he served as cantor was the Beth Sholom Congregation in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania.
Seymour Schwartzman was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son and grandson of cantors, and initially trained with his father. Following service in the US Army, he studied at the School of Sacred Music at Hebrew Union College, while at the same time holding a full-time position as cantor at Temple Beth Emeth in Teaneck, New Jersey. After his graduation in 1953, he served as cantor for the Beth Israel Congregation in Providence, Rhode Island for three years until moving to Elkins Park, Pennsylvania where he took up an appointment as the first cantor to the newly built Beth Sholom Congregation
For several years Schwartzman had also studied classical and musical theatre singing with Robert Weede and eventually received a scholarship to the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia where he studied under Dorothy di Scala. He made his operatic debut as Sonora in La fanciulla del West with the Philadelphia Lyric Opera Company in 1964 and continued to sing in Philadelphia over the next two years both with the Philadelphia Lyric Opera Company and the Little Lyric Opera Company. In 1966 he was one of the four Winners of the American Opera Auditions as well as First Prize winner in the Illinois Opera Guild–WGN Auditions. The American Opera Auditions prize led to his Italian debut at the Teatro Nuovo in Milan as David in L'Amico Fritz that same year. For the next ten years, his primary career would be on the opera and concert stage.
wn.com/Seymour_Schwartzman -
Sherrill Milnes
Sherrill Milnes (born January 10, 1935) is an American operatic baritone most famous for his Verdi roles. From 1965 until 1997 he was associated with the Metropolitan Opera.
His voice is a high dramatic baritone, combining good legato with an incisive rhythmic style; furthermore, he has a commanding and handsome stage presence. By 1965 he had made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera. His international debuts followed soon thereafter, and Milnes became one of the world's prominent Verdi baritones of the 1970s and 1980s.
He has been a prolific recording artist, often in partnership with Plácido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti.
Milnes was born in Downers Grove, Illinois to a dairy farmer and his wife. As a child, he exhibited strong and varied musical talents. In addition to singing, he also played piano, violin, viola, double bass, clarinet, and tuba. Although his interests did not always lean toward opera, he spent many hours singing to his father's cows and was once found on a tractor practicing an operatic laugh.
wn.com/Sherrill_Milnes -
Simon Keenlyside
Simon Keenlyside CBE (born 3 August 1959) is a British baritone who has had an active international career performing in operas and concerts since the mid 1980s.
Keenlyside was born in London, the son of Raymond and Ann Keenlyside. Raymond played second violin in the Aeolian Quartet, and Ann's father was the violinist Leonard Hirsch. When he was eight, he was enrolled in St John's College School, a boarding school for the child choristers of the Choir of St John's College, Cambridge and spent much of his childhood touring and recording with the choir under the direction of choirmaster George Guest.
Keenlyside read zoology at Cambridge University, returning to St John's as a choral scholar, before studying singing at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. After graduation, he won a Peter Moores Foundation scholarship (1985) and chose to join the Royal Northern College of Music to study voice with the baritone John Cameron under whom he developed a love for lieder and German poetry. Keenlyside later said of him:
wn.com/Simon_Keenlyside -
Stanley Sadie
Stanley Sadie CBE (30 October 1930 – 21 March 2005) was a leading British musicologist, music critic, and editor. He was editor of the sixth edition of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1980), which was published as the first edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.
Sadie was educated at St Paul's School, London, and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he read music under Thurston Dart (BA, MusB 1953, MA 1957, PhD 1958). His doctoral dissertation was on mid-eighteenth-century British chamber music. After Cambridge, he taught at Trinity College of Music, London (1957-1965).
Sadie then turned to music journalism, becoming music critic for The Times (1964-1981), and contributing reviews to the Financial Times after 1981, when he had to leave his position and The Times because of his commitments to the Grove and other scholarly work. He was editor of The Musical Times 1967-1987.
From 1970 Sadie was editor of what was planned to be the sixth edition of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1980). Sadie oversaw major changes to the Dictionary, which grew from nine volumes to 20, and was published as the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (New Grove), and is now referred to as the first edition under that name. He was also an important force behind the second edition of New Grove (2001), which grew further to 29 volumes. Sadie also oversaw a major expansion of the Grove franchise, editing the one-volume Grove Concise Dictionary of Music (1988), and several spinoff dictionaries, such as the New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments (three volumes, 1984), the New Grove Dictionary of American Music, (with H. Wiley Hitchcock, four volumes, 1986), and the New Grove Dictionary of Opera (four volumes, 1992). He also edited composer biographies based on the entries in Grove.
wn.com/Stanley_Sadie -
Thomas Quasthoff
Thomas Quasthoff (born November 9, 1959) is a German bass-baritone. Although his reputation was initially based on his performance of Romantic lieder, Quasthoff has proven to have a remarkable range from the Baroque cantatas of Bach to solo jazz improvisations.
Quasthoff was born in Hildesheim, Germany, with serious birth defects caused by his mother's exposure during pregnancy to the drug thalidomide which was prescribed as an antiemetic to combat her morning sickness. Thomas Quasthoff is 4' 4¾" (1.34 m) [1] tall due to shortening of the long bones in his legs, and he has phocomelia of the upper extremities with very short or absent long bones.
Quasthoff was denied admission to the music conservatory in Hanover, Germany, owing to his physical inability to play the piano, rather than a lack of skill required for entry to the conservatory. In the early stages of his education as a singer, Quasthoff was promoted by Sebastian Peschko. Thus, he chose to study voice privately. He also studied law for three years. Prior to his music career, he worked six years as a radio announcer for NDR. He also did voice-over work for television.
wn.com/Thomas_Quasthoff -
Tito Gobbi
Tito Gobbi (24 October 1913 – 5 March 1984) was an Italian operatic baritone with an international reputation.
Tito Gobbi was born in Bassano del Grappa and studied law at the University of Padua before he trained as a singer. Giulio Crimi, a well-known Italian tenor of a previous generation, was Gobbi's teacher in Rome. He made his operatic debut in Gubbio in 1935 as Count Rudolfo in Bellini's La sonnambula. In 1942, he debuted at La Scala in Milan, in the role of Belcore in Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore. He also appeared at the Rome Opera and other significant Italian venues.
Gobbi's international career blossomed after the Second World War, serving as a batman for Sergeant Major Frederick Davis of the Grenadiers. His career began with appearances in 1948 at the San Francisco opera. He performed for the first time at London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 1950 and sang with the Lyric Opera of Chicago from 1954 until 1974. The year 1974 also saw the last of Gobbi's numerous appearances at Covent Garden, where he had been much admired by the public and critics alike for his sensitive musicianship as well as for his acting talent and interpretive insights.
wn.com/Tito_Gobbi -
Titta Ruffo
Titta Ruffo (9 June 1877 - 5 July 1953), born as Ruffo Titta Cafiero, was an Italian opera star who had a major international singing career. Known as the "Voce del leone" ("voice of the lion"), he was greatly admired, even by rival baritones, such as Giuseppe De Luca, who said of Ruffo: "His was not a voice, it was a miracle" (although not often published is the second part of De Luca's conclusion "...which he [Ruffo] bawled away..."), and Victor Maurel, the creator of Verdi's Iago and Falstaff. Maurel said that the notes of Ruffo's upper register were the most glorious baritone sounds he had ever heard (see Pleasants, cited below). Indeed Walter Legge, the prominent classical record producer, went so far as to call Ruffo "a genius".
Born Ruffo Titta in Pisa (he reversed his forename and surname for the stage), Ruffo was the son of an engineer. He studied voice with several teachers, but he was an independent thinker and, basically, his vocal method was self-taught.
Ruffo made his operatic debut in 1898 at the Teatro Constanzi in Rome as the Herald in Wagner's Lohengrin. After a slow start, his career took off in the early 1900s and he quickly achieved international renown due to the power and ardency of voice and acting.
wn.com/Titta_Ruffo -
Tom Jones (singer)
Sir Thomas John Woodward,OBE (born 7 June 1940), known by his stage name Tom Jones, is a Welsh singer. Since the mid 1960s, Jones has sung many styles of popular music – pop, rock, R&B, show tunes, country, dance, soul and gospel – and sold over 100 million records.
Jones has had thirty-six Top 40 hits in the United Kingdom and nineteen in the United States; some of his notable songs include "It's Not Unusual", "What's New Pussycat", "Delilah", "Green, Green Grass of Home", "She's a Lady" and "Kiss".
Having been awarded an OBE in 1999, Jones received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II for "services to music" in 2006. Jones has received numerous other awards throughout his career, including the Grammy Award for Best New Artist in 1966, two Brit Awards—winning Best British Male in 2000, and an MTV Video Music Award. Aside from his musical career, Jones is currently a coach and mentor on television show The Voice UK.
Tom Jones was born at 57 Kingsland Terrace, Treforest, Pontypridd in South Wales. His parents were Thomas Woodward (died 5 October 1981), a coal miner, and Freda Jones (died 7 February 2003). His family was mainly of English descent, both of his paternal grandparents having been born in England and his maternal grandmother, Ada Jones from Pontypridd, having English parents.
wn.com/Tom_Jones_(singer) -
Tom Krause
Tom Krause (born July 5, 1934) is a Finnish operatic baritone particularly associated with Mozart roles.
Born in Helsinki, he first studied medicine, while singing and playing the guitar in a jazz band. His vocal talent led him to leave his medical studies for serious voice studies at the Vienna Music Academy where he was a pupil of Margot Skoda, Sergio Nazor, and Rudolf Bautz. He made his operatic debut in Berlin, as Escamillo, in 1959, and quickly gained a reputation in opera and concert throughout Germany and Scandinavia.
He joined the Hamburg State Opera, where he sang mostly Mozart, Verdi, and Wagner roles, but also such rarities as Rossini's La pietra del paragone and Handel's Jephtha. He began making guest appearances in Munich, Amsterdam, Brussels, and made his debut in Bayreuth, as the Herald in Lohengrin, in 1962.
His English debut took place in 1963, at the Glyndebourne Festival as the Count in Capriccio. His American debut in 1967, at the Metropolitan Opera as the Count in Le nozze di Figaro, received an ovation. From 1968 on, he appeared regularly at the Salzburg Festival, notably as Don Giovanni and Guglielmo.
wn.com/Tom_Krause -
Umberto Giordano
Umberto Menotti Maria Giordano (28 August 1867 – 12 November 1948) was an Italian composer, mainly of operas.
He was born in Foggia in Puglia, southern Italy, and studied under Paolo Serrao at the Conservatoire of Naples. His first opera Marina, was written for the competition staged by the music publishers Casa Sonzogno for the best one-act opera, remembered today because it marked the beginning of Italian verismo; the winner was Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana. Giordano, the youngest candidate, placed sixth among seventy-three with Marina, which generated enough interest for Sonzogno to commission an opera to be staged in the 1891–92 season.
The result was Mala Vita, a gritty verismo opera concerning a labourer who vows to reform a prostitute if he is cured of his tuberculosis. This caused something of a scandal when performed at the Teatro Argentina, Rome, in February 1892. It played successfully at Vienna, Prague and Berlin, and was re-written as Il Voto a few years later in an attempt to raise interest in the work again.
wn.com/Umberto_Giordano -
Victor Maurel
Victor Maurel (born, 17 June 1848 in Marseilles — died, 22 October 1923 in New York City) was a French operatic baritone who enjoyed an international reputation as a great singing-actor.
Educated in music and stage craft at the Paris Conservatory, he made his debut in opera at the city of his birth, Marseilles, in 1867. The following year, he performed on stage in Paris for the first time. The city of New York first heard him in 1873, when he performed at the Academy of Music. Later, he would sing at New York's Metropolitan Opera House (in 1894-96 and 1898-99).
Other famous venues at which he appeared included London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden—in 1873-79, 1891-95 and 1904—and the Paris Opera, where he was on the roster of singers from 1879 through to 1894.
Maurel was renowned in Europe and the United States for his vivid stage presence and exceptional acting and make-up skills; but his voice, while well trained and of good quality, was not considered to be as impressive as that of his chief French baritone rivals, Jean Lassalle (1847-1909) and Maurice Renaud (1861-1933).
wn.com/Victor_Maurel -
Vincenzo Bellini
Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini (3 November 1801 – 23 September 1835) was a Italian opera composer. A native of Catania in Sicily, his greatest works are I Capuleti ed i Montecchi (1830), La sonnambula (1831), Norma (1831), Beatrice di Tenda (1833), and I puritani (1835). Known for his long-flowing melodic lines, for which he was named "the Swan of Catania", Bellini was the quintessential composer of bel canto opera. He died in Puteaux, France at the age of 33, nine months after the premiere of his last opera, I puritani.
Born in Catania, Sicily, Bellini was a child prodigy from a highly musical family and legend has it he could sing an aria of Valentino Fioravanti at eighteen months. He began studying music theory at two, the piano at three, and by the age of five could apparently play well. Bellini's first five pieces were composed when he was just six years old. Regardless of the veracity of these claims, it is certain that Bellini grew up in a musical household and that a career as a musician was never in doubt.
wn.com/Vincenzo_Bellini -
Vladimir Chernov
Vladimir Chernov (born September 22, 1953) is a Russian baritone, particularly associated with the Russian and Italian opera repertories.
Vladimir Nikolaïevitch Chernov was born in a small village near the town of Krasnodar in southern Russia. He studied at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow. After graduating, he became a member of the Kirov Opera in Saint Petersburg in 1981. That same year he won a Special Jury Prize in the Glinka Competition. In 1982 the Kirov sent him to the Accademia della Scala where he studied with Giulietta Simionato. In 1983, he won second prize at the vocal competition "Voci Verdiane" (as well as the special Carlo Galetti prize) in Verdi's hometown of Busseto, Italy. Quickly, Vladimir Chernov attracted international attention.
As a member of the Kirov Opera of Saint Petersburg in 1987, he appeared at the Royal Opera House in London. Later performances were given at La Scala in Milan, the Vienna State Opera, the Paris Opéra, the Rome Opera, the Verona Arena, and others, mostly in the Italian repertory.
wn.com/Vladimir_Chernov -
Wolfgang Holzmair
Wolfgang Holzmair (born 1952 in Vöcklabruck) is an Austrian baritone.
Holzmair studied at the Vienna Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He won 2nd prize in the baritone class of the 's-Hertogenbosch International Vocal Competition in 1981, and a year later 1st prize in the Musikverein International Lieder Competition, Vienna.
Holzmair spent about six years with opera companies in Bern (Bern Theatre) and Gelsenkirchen (Musiktheater im Revier) before successes in Udo Zimmermann's The White Rose and Claude Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande brought him to general attention His repertoire includes rarely performed works such as Henze's Boulevard Solitude, Nigel Osborne’s The Electrification of the Soviet Union,Hindemith's Neues vom Tage and Poulenc's Les mamelles de Tirésias.
More standard works include Richard Strauss's Capriccio (the Count), Ariadne auf Naxos (Harlequin and the Music Master), Der Rosenkavalier (Faninal); Mozart's The Magic Flute (Papageno and the Speaker) and Così fan tutte (Guglielmo and Don Alfonso); Wagner's Tannhäuser (Wolfram), and Meistersinger (Beckmesser). In the 2009/2010 season he sang Demetrius in the Canadian Opera Company's production of Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the Father in Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel on a tour in Japan, and the Sorceress in a concert performance of Purcell's Dido and Aeneasin Vienna
wn.com/Wolfgang_Holzmair -
World War I
World War I (WWI), which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939 (World War II), and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918. It involved all the world's great powers, which were assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies (based on the Triple Entente of the United Kingdom, France and Russia) and the Central Powers (originally centred around the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy; but, as Austria–Hungary had taken the offensive against the agreement, Italy did not enter into the war). These alliances both reorganised (Italy fought for the Allies), and expanded as more nations entered the war. Ultimately more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history. More than 9 million combatants were killed, largely because of enormous increases in lethality of weapons, thanks to new technology, without corresponding improvements in protection or mobility. It was the sixth-deadliest conflict in world history, subsequently paving the way for various political changes such as revolutions in the nations involved.
wn.com/World_War_I
karaoke
BARITONE
Oh friends, not these tones!
Let us raise our voices in more
Pleasing and more joyful sounds!
ODE TO JOY (Friedrich Schiller)
BARITONE, QUARTET, AND CHORUS
Joy, beautiful spark of the gods,
Daughter of Elysium,
We enter fire imbibed,
Heavenly, thy sanctuary.
Thy magic reunites those
Whom stern custom has parted;
All men will become brothers
Under thy gentle wing.
May he who has had the fortune
To gain a true friend
And he who has won a noble wife
Join in our jubilation!
Yes, even if he calls but one soul
His own in all the world.
But he who has failed in this
Must steal away alone and in tears.
All the world's creatures
Draw joy from nature's breast;
Both the good and the evil
Follow her rose-strewn path.
She gave us kisses and wine
And a friend loyal unto death;
She gave lust for life to the lowliest,
And the Cherub stands before God.
TENOR SOLO AND CHORUS
Joyously, as his suns speed
Through Heaven's glorious order,
Hasten, Brothers, on your way,
Exulting as a knight in victory.
CHORUS
Joy, beautiful spark of the gods,
Daughter of Elysium,
We enter fire imbibed,
Heavenly, thy sanctuary.
Be embraced, Millions!
This kiss for all the world!
Brothers!, above the starry canopy
A loving father must dwell.
Can you sense the Creator, world?
Seek him above the starry canopy.
Above the stars He must dwell.
Be embraced, Millions!
This kiss for all the world!
Brothers!, above the starry canopy
A loving father must dwell.
Can you sense the Creator, world?
Seek him above the starry canopy.
Above the stars He must dwell.
Joy, beautiful spark of the gods,
Daughter of Elysium,
We enter fire imbibed,
Heavenly, thy sanctuary.
Be embraced, Millions!
This kiss for all the world!
Brothers!, above the starry canopy
A loving father must dwell.
Can you sense the Creator, world?
Seek him above the starry canopy.
Above the stars He must dwell.
Be embraced, Millions!
This kiss for all the world!
Brothers!, above the starry canopy
A loving father must dwell.
Can you sense the Creator, world?
Seek him above the starry canopy.
Above the stars He must dwell.
Joy, daughter of Elysium
Thy magic reunites those
Whom stern custom has parted;
All men will become brothers
Under thy gentle wing.
Be embraced, Millions!
This kiss for all the world!
Brothers!, above the starry canopy
A loving father must dwell.
Joy, beautiful spark of Gods!,
Daughter of Elysium,
Send this Playlist by SMS
Email this Page
Rossini: The Barber Of Seville (baritone: Liao Changyong)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:05
- Updated: 17 Nov 2012
pho99.blogspot.com Rossini The Barber Of Seville (baritone: Liao Changyong)
http://wn.com/Rossini_The_Barber_Of_Seville_baritone_Liao_Changyong
Baritone aria
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:25
- Updated: 28 Oct 2012
belcanto
http://wn.com/Baritone_aria
PRS Mike Mushok SE Baritone Guitar
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:52
- Updated: 27 Nov 2012
For more gear reviews and videos check out guitarworld.com In this video Guitar World's gear editor Paul Riario demonstrates the features of the PRS Mike Mushok SE baritone guitar.
http://wn.com/PRS_Mike_Mushok_SE_Baritone_Guitar
How to Play a Baritone Horn : Parts of Baritone Horn
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:25
- Updated: 10 Nov 2012
The parts of a baritone horn, mouthpiece, valves and lead pipe, are discussed by our professional baritone and trumpet teacher in this free baritone video music lesson. Expert: JD Keating Bio: JD Keating is a musician, artist and educator from Western Massachusetts. For two decades he has lent his varied talents to innumerable projects in the music industry. Filmmaker: Christian Munoz-Donoso
http://wn.com/How_to_Play_a_Baritone_Horn_Parts_of_Baritone_Horn
Legend of Zelda - Euphonium / Baritone Duet
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:01
- Updated: 21 Nov 2012
Overworld Theme from "The Legend of Zelda" performed by two euphonia. DOWNLOAD this SHEET MUSIC for free RIGHT NOW by visiting www.tubapeter.com Visit www.TubaPeter.com http www.MySpace.com www.Twitter.com or www.MySpace.com Now available in BASS CLEF + TREBLE CLEF 10/10/2011 - 100000 views. Thanks everyone!
http://wn.com/Legend_of_Zelda_Euphonium_Baritone_Duet
Baritone Horn Solo: Chiapenacas by Euphonium Solist David Werden
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:44
- Updated: 29 Sep 2012
Euphoniumist David Werden performs this solo on Baritone Horn. The solo was arranged by the great trumpet virtuoso Rafael Mendez and performed at Tubonium in the Twin Cities, MN. This arrangement is available from: www.sheetmusicplus.com I did not upload this video to demonstrate my "mastery" of the baritone horn. There are many wonderful baritone players, especially in Great Britain, who specialize in this smaller-bore instrument. But in the USA many musicians are not familiar with the true British-bore baritone. This confusion is worsened by the fact that the euphonium is often called a baritone. One goal of this performance was to help the audience understand how unique a real baritone is compared to a euphonium (I played both horns on this recital). The other goal was to help more low brass players become familiar with the music of Mendez, a valuable legacy indeed. Agraduate of The University of Iowa, Mr. Werden was the euphonium soloist with The United States Coast Guard Band for more than 20 years. He has performed throughout the United States, as well as in Canada, England, Japan, and the former Soviet Union. Through FM and TV broadcasts, his solos have been heard in dozens of countries around the world. He is a recitalist and clinician, and has performed at local, national, and international symposiums. He was a member of The USCG Band Euphonium/Tuba Quartet, the Atlantic Tuba Quartet, and the Classic Brass Band. He previously taught at the University of ...
http://wn.com/Baritone_Horn_Solo_Chiapenacas_by_Euphonium_Solist_David_Werden
How to Play a Baritone Horn : How to Play an E Flat Major Scale on a Baritone Horn
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 0:56
- Updated: 17 Nov 2012
Play an E flat major scale on the baritone horn; learn how with tips from our professional baritone and trumpet teacher in this free baritone video music lesson. Expert: JD Keating Bio: JD Keating is a musician, artist and educator from Western Massachusetts. For two decades he has lent his varied talents to innumerable projects in the music industry. Filmmaker: Christian Munoz-Donoso
http://wn.com/How_to_Play_a_Baritone_Horn_How_to_Play_an_E_Flat_Major_Scale_on_a_Baritone_Horn
Simon Keenlyside, baritone: Part 1
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 24:00
- Updated: 28 Nov 2012
Bing and Dennis speak with Simon Keenlyside.
http://wn.com/Simon_Keenlyside,_baritone_Part_1
Pablo Francisco Movie Guy
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:04
- Updated: 28 Nov 2012
Pablo Francisco from The Three Amigos
http://wn.com/Pablo_Francisco_Movie_Guy
Vanguard Baritones 2012 - Show Excerpts
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:48
- Updated: 25 Nov 2012
August 9 - The baritone section plays through several different excerpts of their show, while warming up for Quarterfinals in Indianapolis, IN. Warm ups were moved into the convention center due to a severe thunderstorm. PS: Sorry for the minor video errors in the first clip. Go see them and others live! Get your tickets at www.dci.org www.facebook.com
http://wn.com/Vanguard_Baritones_2012_Show_Excerpts
Zeljko Lucic, baritone: Part 1
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 23:25
- Updated: 27 Nov 2012
Bing and Dennis speak with baritone Zeljko Lucic.
http://wn.com/Zeljko_Lucic,_baritone_Part_1
Largo al Factotum Cage Match: 14 Baritones Sing the High A
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:35
- Updated: 25 Oct 2012
One of the hardest moments of Figaro's entrance aria from the Barber of Seville, what many consider to be the hardest baritone aria...perfect material for a cage match. Here we have 14 baritones attempting the infamous high A. This optional cadenza is left out by many baritones, including many great Figaros (Thomas Allen, for instance. Others hit the cadenza but omit the highest note (ie Robert Merrill). But here is a compilation of baritones with the guts and the balls to sing it all! In chronological order: 1. Riccardo Stracciari (1875-1955) 2. Lawrence Tibbett (1896-1956) 3. Leonard Warren (1911-1960) 4. Gino Bechi (1913-1993) 5. Tito Gobbi (1913-1984) 6. Rolando Panerai (b. 1924) 7. Nicolae Herlea (b. 1927) 8. Hermann Prey (1929-1998) 9. Sherrill Milnes (b. 1935) 10. Leo Nucci (b. 1942) 11. Thomas Hampson (b. 1955) 12. Dmitri Hvorostovsky (b. 1962) 13. Russell Braun (b. 1965) 14. Aaron St. Clair Nicholson And last but not least: 15. Mario del Monaco (1915-1982) --this one is just for fun. No votes for him will count. (more) (less)
http://wn.com/Largo_al_Factotum_Cage_Match_14_Baritones_Sing_the_High_A
Wotan sing-off - 11 basses and baritones sing Wotan's Abschied
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 10:02
- Updated: 06 Nov 2012
Eleven basses and baritones sing one of the most famous lines in all of opera: "Wer meines Speeres Spitze fürchtet, durchschreite das Feuer nie!" Your Wotans---of the past, present, and future---are, in chronological order of performance: 1. Friedrich Schorr - 1940, Metropolitan Opera, c. Erich Leinsdorf 2. Hans Hotter - 1955; London Recording, c. Leopold Ludwig 3. Jerome Hines - 1960; Bayreuth Festival, c. Rudolf Kempe 4. Theo Adam - 1965; Bayreuth Festival, c. Karl Bohm 5. Thomas Stewart - 1969; Bayreuth Festival, c. Lorin Maazel 6. Donald McIntyre - 1974; Bayreuth Festival, c. Horst Stein 7. Sigmund Nimsgern - 1986; Bayreuth Festival, c. Peter Schneider 8. James Morris - 1993; Metropolitan Opera, c. James Levine 9. John Tomlinson - 1995; Bayreuth Festival, c. James Levine 10. Rene Pape - 2008; NDR Concert appearance, c. Alan Gilbert 11. Albert Dohmen - 2008; Bayreuth Festival, c. Christian Thielemann Enjoy!
http://wn.com/Wotan_sing-off_11_basses_and_baritones_sing_Wotan's_Abschied
Thomas Quasthoff, bass-baritone ("Song to the evening star," Wagner's Tannhauser)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:05
- Updated: 26 Nov 2012
A very nice recording by a very nice voice- sad story. Enjoy. Recorded from radio. Thomas Quasthoff (born November 9, 1959) is a German bass-baritone generally regarded as one of the finest singers of his generation. Although his reputation was initially based on his performance of Romantic lieder, Quasthoff has proven to have a remarkable range from the Baroque cantatas of Bach to solo jazz improvisations. Quasthoff was born in Hildesheim, Germany, with serious birth defects caused by his mother's exposure during pregnancy to the drug thalidomide which was prescribed as an antiemetic to combat her morning sickness. Thomas Quasthoff is unusually short (about four feet tall) due to shortening of the long bones in his legs, and he has phocomelia of the upper extremities with very short or absent long bones and flipper-like appearance of his hands.
http://wn.com/Thomas_Quasthoff,_bass-baritone_Song_to_the_evening_star,_Wagner's_Tannhauser
Baritone Eric Greene sings the National Anthem
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:54
- Updated: 26 Nov 2012
American baritone Eric Greene, who performs the role of Escamillo in Virginia Opera's 2006 production of Carmen, sings the National Anthem during a commemorative ceremony on September 11, 2006 in Norfolk, Virginia. More info at www.vaopera.org. Copyright (c) 2006 by Virginia Opera Association - All Rights Reserved. This program may not be copied in whole or in part without the written consent of Virginia Opera Association.
http://wn.com/Baritone_Eric_Greene_sings_the_National_Anthem
Taylor Guitars Baritone
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:09
- Updated: 21 Nov 2012
Want to subscribe to check out other rockin' Taylor Guitars videos? Check out the Taylor Guitars channel page www.youtube.com and subscribe at www.youtube.com Taylor baritone guitars are designed for playing in a lower register with normal string tension, thanks to a longer 27-inch scale length. Tuned to B (BEADF# B), the deeper acoustic tone is voiced with the GS body shape and a wood combination of Indian rosewood with Sitka spruce. A great choice for singers with a lower vocal range or players who favor a detuned sound, the baritone is offered as either a 6-string or an 8-string with two added octave strings that expand the tonal range.
http://wn.com/Taylor_Guitars_Baritone
Baritone Andrey Grigoriev performing "Song of the Venetian Guest" "Opera "Sadko"
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:05
- Updated: 13 Nov 2012
Russian Baritone Andrey Grigoriev performs"The Venetian guest aria from the opera Sadko by Rimsky Korsakov. Spring 2009, Tchaikovsky hall in Moscow. Song of the Venetian Guest", from the 4th act of Rimsky-Korsakoff's 1897 opera Sadko. The people of Novgorod gather at a pier on Lake Ilmen, thronging around the overseas traders (Varangian, Indian, and Venetian, among others) and inspecting their merchandise. After a stately introduction, the Venetian's aria gives way to a colorful, rollicking depiction of the splendors of his native city.
http://wn.com/Baritone_Andrey_Grigoriev_performing_Song_of_the_Venetian_Guest_Opera_Sadko
Simon Callow on "Being Shakespeare"
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:46
- Updated: 28 Nov 2012
Celebrated British star of stage and screen Simon Callow returns to Chicago with a tour de force solo performance that took the Edinburgh Festival Fringe by storm and played to great acclaim throughout its UK tour and West End engagement. Callow weaves together excerpts from Shakespeare's plays and poems, breathing new life into his unforgettable characters and the real man behind the legend. Presented as part of CST's World's Stage, this unique portrait of the Bard follows Callow's major international success The Mystery of Charles Dickens (Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Broadway and London's West End) in addition to memorable film roles including Shakespeare in Love, Four Weddings and a Funeral, and A Room with a View. London's Guardian raved, "we've had some fine one-man shows about Shakespeare from John Gielgud, Ian McKellen and Michael Pennington. But Simon Callow's is among the very best... a memorably multidimensional picture of Shakespeare, steeped in scholarship and love."
http://wn.com/Simon_Callow_on_Being_Shakespeare
Baritone Sax Solo
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:21
- Updated: 27 Nov 2012
Awesome ....Beatiful song!!!!
http://wn.com/Baritone_Sax_Solo
Japanese Baritone Teppei Kono sings Pinoy song "Matud Nila"
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:57
- Updated: 19 Nov 2012
Japanes baritone Teppei Kono's emotionl rendition of Matud Nila give Pilita Corales a run for her money!
http://wn.com/Japanese_Baritone_Teppei_Kono_sings_Pinoy_song_Matud_Nila
The Best of Baritone Sax
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:30
- Updated: 28 Nov 2012
Amazing..Baritone Sax....
http://wn.com/The_Best_of_Baritone_Sax
Sherrill Milnes - Largo al factotum
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:34
- Updated: 17 Nov 2012
Sherrill Milnes sings "Largo al factotum" from Il barbiere di Siviglia, by G. Rossini. London Symphony Orchestra James Levine, conductor All Saints Church, Tooting Graveney, VIII.1974
http://wn.com/Sherrill_Milnes_Largo_al_factotum
2009: Sam Roberts-Smith, baritone opera singer, in the Finals of the Australian Singing Competition
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:34
- Updated: 03 Nov 2012
Sam Roberts-Smith, baritone and finalist in the 2009 ASC Finals Concert, at His Majesty's Theatre, Perth, Western Australia. www.aussing.org.au http
http://wn.com/2009_Sam_Roberts-Smith,_baritone_opera_singer,_in_the_Finals_of_the_Australian_Singing_Competition
photo: AP / Sepahnews
27 Nov 2012
WASHINGTON -- The drone wars are here. While President Obama ponders new legal and moral guidelines to govern America's growing use of armed robot aircraft, the world outside the White House is engaged in a revolutionary frenzy of building, arming and flying killer drones ... More than 50 countries operate surveillance drones and, increasingly, are fitting them with weapons. The U.S ... spy drone was shot down last December ... On Oct ... 988 miles ... ....(size: 8.4Kb)
photo: AP / Jerome Delay
27 Nov 2012
M23 rebels controlling the eastern city of Goma in the DR Congo have said they are not about to withdraw as demanded by regional leaders. The rebels said on Tuesday there were still in charge of Goma, just hours after General Aronda Nyakairima, the head of the Ugandan military, was quoted by the Reuters news agency as saying that their leader, Sultani Makenga, had told him he would pull out of Goma and Sake ... 276 Source. ... Share ... News ... ;">....(size: 17.7Kb)
photo: UN / Jan Golinski
27 Nov 2012
Doha conference is warned that climate models do not yet take account of methane in thawing permafrost. Frozen ground in Siberia. Permafrost covers nearly a quarter of the northern hemisphere. Photograph. Francis Latreille/Corbis. The United Nations sounded a stark warning on the threat to the climate from methane in the thawing permafrost as governments met for the second day of climate change negotiations in Doha, Qatar ... ....(size: 5.3Kb)
photo: UN / Rick Bajornas
28 Nov 2012
By Victor Kotsev. Thursday is shaping up as a big day in Palestinian history. Exactly 65 years after the United Nations resolution partitioning British Mandatory Palestine was adopted (and rejected at the time by the Arabs), the General Assembly will vote on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's proposal for non-member state status for Palestine within the borders of the period between the 1948 and the 1967 wars ... Â. Palestinian horizon....(size: 16.8Kb)
photo: AP
26 Nov 2012
This town of 19,000 nestled in an idyllic mountain pass of impossibly green pastures and golden autumn trees is on the front lines of Turkey's rapidly escalating guerrilla war. In a struggle for autonomy as well as independent language and education rights, the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has waged a low-grade conflict in Turkey for decades ... 4 just as a Turkish army tank rolled by ... "The violence is getting worse....(size: 8.8Kb)
All About Jazz
29 Nov 2012
Abate, like Woods, is known for his mastery of the alto, but on this date his superb talents on the baritone, soprano and flute are also on display ... All is not fire and brimstone, however. Composed by Patrick for his wife, the balladic "Marny" has a great deal of tenderness behind the music and is softly played by Abate on a burly baritone ... Track Listing ... Personnel. Greg Abate. alto, soprano and baritone saxophones, flute; Phil Woods....(size: 3.1Kb)
Chicago Tribune
29 Nov 2012
Producer Scott Rudin set up Jack Black and Richard Linklater nearly a decade ago for "School of Rock," with Rudin persuading the indie filmmaker to tackle the commercial comedy ... Over a recent breakfast with Black and Linklater, the conversation, like it does in so many of Linklater's movies, took surprising, tangential turns ... What made you think of Jack? ... Black ... Dr ... His version of "Blessed Assurance" is this amazing, baritone masterpiece....(size: 4.7Kb)
Canada Dot Com
29 Nov 2012
TERRACE. Bob Erb peers out from his half-open front door, wearing a paint-speckled maroon shirt emblazoned with a large cannabis leaf ... Erb's duplex unit is identified by an A scrawled in jiffy marker on the front door ... A fistful of cash, a $1,000 cheque here, a $10,000 cheque there ... 2 win ... So, "on my way home I went and cut them a $5,000 cheque," he says in his soft baritone, his eyes twinkling behind his large shaded spectacles....(size: 7.4Kb)
The Examiner
28 Nov 2012
The Future is Now features sopranos Nadine Sierra (Fort Lauderdale, Florida), Marina Harris (Los Angeles, California); mezzo-sopranos Laura Krumm (Iowa City, Iowa) and Renée Rapier (Marion, Iowa); tenor Brian Jagde (Piermont, New York); baritones Ao Li (Shandong, China) and Joo Won Kang (Seoul, South Korea); bass-baritone Ryan Kuster (Jacksonville, ......(size: 4.1Kb)
The Guardian
28 Nov 2012
Katzameier/Radjiewska/Zook/Vokalensemble NOVA/Klangforum Wien/Christ. (Col Legno, two CDs) 4 ... Buy it from ... This wonderfully supple, controlled performance, conducted by Evan Christ, with the baritone Otto Katzameier as Macbeth and the mezzo Anna Radjiewska as Lady Macbeth, and three other soloists taking multiple roles, emphasises both the strange, ethereal beauty of Sciarrino's world, and the dramatic coherence of the 100-minute opera....(size: 3.4Kb)
Jazzwise Magazine
28 Nov 2012
With a new album to promote, filled out by bassist Mike Pope and Terreon Gulley on drums, this performance of its title-track, ‘Signing’, was briefly uploaded to YouTube ... The festival began and ended with big bands, the experienced Black Magic Band from Galway (100km north of Limerick) featured vocals with sax soloists Peter Joyce (baritone), Steve Hanks (tenor) and Matt Berrill (alto), plus his under-utilised trumpeter brother Peter....(size: 2.0Kb)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
28 Nov 2012
These are among 832 grants totaling $23.3 million being funded throughout the country and Puerto Rico ... • Silk Screen (aka Silk Screen ... The Hearne work will be scored for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano and percussion, while the Rosenblum work, titled "Falling" (based on a James Dickey poem), will be scored for amplified ensemble of bass-baritone voice, flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano/sampler and percussion ... ....(size: 2.2Kb)
Kansas City Star
28 Nov 2012
Grinchâ with Straight No Chaser, and a stunningly powerful reading of Mark Lowry and Lee Greenâs âMary, Did You Know?â Magic indeed ... â¢Â The Polyphonic Spree, âHolidaydream ... â¢Â Various Artists, ââTwas the Night Before Hanukkah ... â¢Â Scotty McCreery, âChristmas With Scotty McCreeryâ* â1/2 The âAmerican Idolâ alum applies his grainy baritone with commitment but not much vision to the usual holiday suspects ... ....(size: 2.8Kb)
The Miami Herald
28 Nov 2012
Itâs word association time. Say the first word that springs to mind. âholiday ââ.â Did you think âseasonâ? âSaleâ? âHangoverâ? How about âmusicâ?. This year, there are plenty of new holiday albums to pick from ... Hereâs a 2012 roundup. ... The American Idol alum applies his grainy baritone with commitment but not much vision to the usual holiday suspects ... â¢Â The Polyphonic Spree âHolidaydream ... 1 . .. ....(size: 3.3Kb)
All About Jazz
28 Nov 2012
In 2009, Dutch flautist Mark Alban Lotz and bassist Meinrad Kneer initiated a monthly creative music series, titled U-EX(perimental), at Centraal Museum in Utrecht, presenting performances of spontaneous free improvisations ... All the improvisations are brief and seek to outline a musical idea with no attachment to further interplay ... Track Listing ... baritone and soprano saxophone, trombone mouthpiece (3, 6, 8, 13, 18, 24); Joost Buis....(size: 3.2Kb)
The Examiner
28 Nov 2012
New York's Metropolitan Opera announced today that will present a new, family-friendly holiday production of Rossini's classic comedy "The Barber of Seville", with deeply discounted tickets, beginning December 18 ... 18-Jan. 5 ... D ... Baritone Rodion Pogossov, a graduate of the Met’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, made his Met role debut as Figaro in 2009, and has sung that role 17 more times ... For more info ... Suggested by the author.....(size: 3.3Kb)
The Los Angeles Times
28 Nov 2012
Nearly two years after his death, the first posthumous release from G-funk singer Nate Dogg is on the way. Billed as the final album from the hip-hop crooner, “Nate Dogg ... The album will feature previously unreleased and re-mastered performances from the late singer including collaborations with Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige and Jay-Z. ... He was 41. By lending his gruff baritone vocals to ubiquitous hooks on hits by Dr ... 0 ... .....(size: 31.1Kb)
All About Jazz
28 Nov 2012
View All12Next ». Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet + 1. Café Oto. London. November 9-10, 2012 ... In one magnificent passage he layered his vibrato-laden alto saxophone ululations over Gustafsson's majestic baritone elegy to scalp-pricking effect, while the first set ended with another coruscating Brötzmann tenor solo which built to a climax and then sidestepped the expected blowout by gently subsiding to silence. View All12Next ». ....(size: 4.6Kb)
This article is about the voice type. For other uses, see Baritone (disambiguation).
| Voice type |
| Female voices
Male voices
|
Baritone (or barytone, although this spelling is essentially archaic and little-used since the 1920s) is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice.[1] Originally from the Greek βαρύτονος (barýtonos), meaning deep (or heavy) sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C (i.e. F2–F4) in choral music, and from the second G below middle C to the G above middle C (G2 to G4) in operatic music, but can be extended at either end.
Contents |
History[link]
The first use of the term "baritone" emerged as baritonans late in the 15th century,[2] usually in French sacred polyphonic music. At this early stage it was frequently used as the lowest of the voices (including the bass), but in 17th century Italy the term was all-encompassing and used to describe the average male choral voice.
Baritones took roughly the range we know today at the beginning of the 18th century but they were still lumped in with their bass colleagues until well into the 19th century. Indeed, many operatic works of the 18th century have roles marked as bass that in reality are low baritone roles (or bass-baritone parts in modern parlance). Examples of this are to be found, for instance, in the operas and oratorios of George Frideric Handel. The greatest and most enduring parts for baritones in 18th-century operatic music were composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. They include Count Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro, Guglielmo in Così fan tutte, Papageno in The Magic Flute and the Don in Don Giovanni.[3]
19th century[link]
The bel canto style of vocalism which arose in Italy in the early 19th century supplanted the castrato-dominated opera seria of the previous century. It led to the baritone being viewed as a separate voice category from the bass. Traditionally, basses in operas had been cast as authority figures such as a king or high priest; but with the advent of the more fluid baritone voice, the roles allotted by composers to lower male voices expanded in the direction of trusted companions or even romantic leads—normally the province of tenors. More often than not, however, baritones found themselves portraying villains.
The principal composers of bel canto opera are considered to be:
- Gioachino Rossini (The Barber of Seville, William Tell);
- Gaetano Donizetti (Don Pasquale, L'elisir d'amore, Lucia di Lammermoor, Lucrezia Borgia, La favorite);
- Vincenzo Bellini (I puritani, Norma);
- Giacomo Meyerbeer (Les Huguenots); and
- the young Giuseppe Verdi (Nabucco, Ernani, Macbeth, Rigoletto, La traviata, Il trovatore).
The prolific operas of these composers, plus the works of Verdi's maturity, such as Un ballo in maschera, La forza del destino, Don Carlos/Don Carlo, the revised Simon Boccanegra, Aida, Otello and Falstaff, blazed many new and rewarding performance pathways for baritones. Figaro in Il barbiere is often called the first true baritone role. However, Donizetti and Verdi in their vocal writing went on to emphasise the top fifth of the baritone voice, rather than its lower notes—thus generating a more brilliant sound. Further pathways opened up when the musically complex and physically demanding operas of Richard Wagner began to enter the mainstream repertory of the world's opera houses during the second half of the 19th century.
The major international baritone of the first half of the 19th century was the Italian Antonio Tamburini (1800–1876). He was a famous Don Giovanni in Mozart's eponymous opera as well as being a Bellini and Donizetti specialist. Commentators praised his voice for its beauty, flexibility and smooth tonal emission, which are the hallmarks of a bel canto singer. Tamburini's range, however, was probably closer to that of a bass-baritone than to that of a modern "Verdi baritone". His French equivalent was Henri-Bernard Dabadie, who was a mainstay of the Paris Opera between 1819 and 1836 and the creator of several major Rossinian baritone roles, including Guillaume Tell. Dabadie sang in Italy, too, where he originated the role of Belcore in L'elisir d'amore in 1832.
The most important of Tamburini's Italianate successors were all Verdians. They included Giorgio Ronconi, who created the title role in Verdi's Nabucco; Felice Varesi, who created the title roles in Macbeth and Rigoletto as well as Germont in La traviata; Antonio Superchi, the originator of Don Carlo in Ernani; Francesco Graziani, who was the original Don Carlo di Vargas in La forza del destino; Leone Giraldoni, the creator of Renato in Un ballo in maschera and the first Simon Boccanegra; Enrico Delle Sedie, who was London's first Renato; Adriano Pantaleoni, renowned for his performances as Amonasro in Aida as well as other Verdi roles at La Scala, Milan; Francesco Pandolfini, whose singing at La Scala during the 1870s was praised by Verdi; Antonio Cotogni, a much lauded singer in Milan, London and Saint Petersburg, the first Italian Posa in Don Carlos and later a great vocal pedagogue, too; and Giuseppe Del Puente, who sang Verdi to acclaim in the United States.
Among the non-Italian born baritones that were active in the third quarter of the 19th century, Tamburini's mantle as an outstanding exponent of Mozart and Donizetti's music was probably taken up most faithfully by a Belgian, Camille Everardi, who later settled in Russia and taught voice. In France, Paul Barroilhet succeeded Dabadie as the Paris opera's best known baritone. Like Dabadie, he also sang in Italy and created an important Donizetti role: in his case, Alphonse in La favorite (in 1840).
Luckily, the gramophone was invented early enough to capture on disc the voices of the top Italian Verdi and Donizetti baritones of the last two decades of the 19th century, whose operatic performances were characterized by considerable re-creative freedom and a high degree of technical finish. They included Mattia Battistini (known as the "King of Baritones"), Giuseppe Kaschmann (born Josip Kašman) who, atypically, sang Wagner's Telramund and Amfortas not in Italian but in German, at the Bayreuth Festival in the 1890s; Giuseppe Campanari; Antonio Magini-Coletti; Mario Ancona (chosen to be the first Silvio in Pagliacci); and Antonio Scotti, who came to the Met from Europe in 1899 and remained on the roster of singers until 1933. Antonio Pini-Corsi was the standout Italian buffo baritone in the period between about 1880 and World War I, reveling in comic opera roles by Rossini, Donizetti and Paer, among others. In 1893, he created the part of Ford in Verdi's last opera, Falstaff.
Notable among their contemporaries were the cultured and technically adroit French baritones Jean Lassalle (hailed as the most accomplished baritone of his generation), Victor Maurel (the creator of Verdi's Iago, Falstaff and Tonio in Leoncavallo's Pagliacci), Paul Lhérie (the first Posa in the revised, Italian-language version of Don Carlos), and Maurice Renaud (a singing actor of the first magnitude). Lassalle, Maurel and Renaud enjoyed superlative careers on either side of the Atlantic and left a valuable legacy of recordings. Five other significant Francophone baritones who recorded, too, during the early days of the gramophone/phonograph were Léon Melchissédec and Jean Noté of the Paris Opera and Gabriel Soulacroix, Henry Albers and Charles Gilibert of the Opéra-Comique. The Quaker baritone David Bispham, who sang in London and New York between 1891 and 1903, was the leading American male singer of this generation. He also recorded for the gramophone.
The oldest-born star baritone known for sure to have made solo gramophone discs was the Englishman Sir Charles Santley (1834–1922). Santley made his operatic debut in Italy in 1858 and became one of Covent Garden's leading singers. He was still giving critically acclaimed concerts in London in the 1890s. The composer of Faust, Charles Gounod, wrote Valentine's aria "Even bravest heart" for him in 1864. A couple of primitive cylinder recordings dating from about 1900 have been attributed by collectors to the dominant French baritone of the 1860s and 1870s, Jean-Baptiste Faure (1830–1914), the creator of Posa in Verdi's original French-language version of Don Carlos. It is doubtful, however, that Faure (who retired in 1886) made the cylinders. However, a contemporary of Faure's, Antonio Cotogni, (1831–1918)—probably the foremost Italian baritone of his generation—can be heard, briefly and dimly, at the age of 77, on a duet recording with the tenor Francesco Marconi. (Cotogni and Marconi had sung together in the first London performance of Amilcare Ponchielli's La Gioconda in 1883, performing the roles of Barnaba and Enzo respectively.)
There are 19th century references in the musical literature to certain baritone subtypes. These include the light and tenorish baryton-Martin, named after French singer Jean-Blaise Martin (1768/69–1837),[4] and the deeper, more powerful Heldenbariton (today's bass-baritone) of Wagnerian opera.
Perhaps the most accomplished Heldenbaritons of Wagner's day were August Kindermann, Franz Betz and Theodor Reichmann. Betz created Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger and undertook Wotan in the first Der Ring des Nibelungen cycle at Bayreuth, while Reichmann created Amfortas in Parsifal, also at Bayreuth. Lyric German baritones sang lighter Wagnerian roles such as Wolfram in Tannhäuser, Kurwenal in Tristan und Isolde or Telramund in Lohengrin. They made large strides, too, in the performance of art song and oratorio, with Franz Schubert favouring several baritones for his vocal music, in particular Johann Michael Vogl.[5]
Nineteenth-century operettas became the preserve of lightweight baritone voices. They were given comic parts in the tradition of the previous century's comic bass by Gilbert and Sullivan in many of their productions. This did not prevent the French master of operetta, Jacques Offenbach, from assigning the villain's role in The Tales of Hoffmann to a big-voiced baritone for the sake of dramatic effect. Other 19th-century French composers like Meyerbeer, Hector Berlioz, Camille Saint-Saëns, Georges Bizet and Jules Massenet wrote attractive parts for baritones, too. These included Nelusko in L'Africaine (Meyerbeer's last opera), Mephistopheles in La damnation de Faust (a role also sung by basses), the Priest of Dagon in Samson and Delilah, Escamillo in Carmen, Zurga in Les pêcheurs de perles, Lescaut in Manon, Athanael in Thaïs and Herod in Hérodiade. Russian composers included substantial baritone parts in their operas. Witness the title roles in Peter Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin (which received its first production in 1879) and Alexander Borodin's Prince Igor (1890).
Mozart continued to be sung throughout the 19th century although, generally speaking, his operas were not revered to the same extent that they are today by music critics and audiences. Back then, baritones rather than high basses normally sang Don Giovanni – arguably Mozart's greatest male operatic creation. Famous Dons of the late 19th and early 20th centuries included Scotti and Maurel, as well as Portugal's Francisco d'Andrade and Sweden's John Forsell.
20th century[link]
The dawn of the 20th century opened up more opportunities for baritones than ever before as a taste for strenuously exciting vocalism and lurid, "slice-of-life" operatic plots took hold in Italy and spread elsewhere. The most prominent verismo baritones included such major singers in Europe and America as the polished Giuseppe De Luca (the first Sharpless in Madama Butterfly), Mario Sammarco (the first Gerard in Andrea Chénier), Eugenio Giraldoni (the first Scarpia in Tosca), Pasquale Amato (the first Rance in La fanciulla del West), Riccardo Stracciari (noted for his richly attractive timbre) and Domenico Viglione-Borghesi, whose voice was exceeded in size only by that of the lion-voiced Titta Ruffo. Ruffo was the most commanding Italian baritone of his era or, arguably, any other era. He was at his prime from the early 1900s to the early 1920s and enjoyed success in Italy, England and America (in Chicago and later at the Met).
Between them, these baritones established the echt performance style for baritones undertaking roles in verismo operas. The chief verismo composers were Giacomo Puccini, Ruggero Leoncavallo, Pietro Mascagni, Alberto Franchetti, Umberto Giordano and Francesco Cilea. Verdi's works continued to remain popular, however, with audiences in Italy, the Spanish-speaking countries, the United States and the United Kingdom and, interestingly enough, Germany, where there was a major Verdi revival in Berlin between the Wars.
Outside the field of Italian opera, an important addition to the Austro-German repertory occurred in 1905. This was the premiere of Richard Strauss's Salome, with the pivotal part of John the Baptist assigned to a baritone. (The enormous-voiced Dutch baritone Anton van Rooy, a Wagner specialist, sang John when the opera reached the Met in 1907). Then, in 1925, Germany's Leo Schützendorf created the title baritone role in Alban Berg's harrowing Wozzeck.[6] In a separate development, the French composer Claude Debussy's post-Wagnerian masterpiece Pelléas et Mélisande featured not one but two lead baritones at its 1902 premiere. These two baritones, Jean Périer and Hector Dufranne, possessed contrasting voices. (Dufranne – sometimes classed as a bass-baritone – had a darker, more powerful instrument than did Périer, who was a true baryton-Martin.)
Characteristic of the Wagnerian baritones of the 20th century was a general progression of individual singers from higher-lying baritone parts to lower-pitched ones. This was the case with Germany's Hans Hotter. Hotter made his debut in 1929. As a young singer he appeared in Verdi and created the Commandant in Richard Strauss's Friedenstag and Olivier in Capriccio. By the 1950s, however, he was being hailed as the top Wagnerian bass-baritone in the world. His Wotan was especially praised by critics for its musicianship. Other major Wagnerian baritones have included Hotter's predecessors Leopold Demuth, Anton van Rooy, Hermann Weil, Clarence Whitehill, Friedrich Schorr, Rudolf Bockelmann and Hans Hermann Nissen. Demuth, van Rooy, Weil and Whitehill were at their peak in the late 19th and early 20th centuries while Schorr, Bockelmann and Nissen were stars of the 1920s and 1930s.
In addition to their heavyweight Wagnerian cousins, there was a plethora of baritones with more lyrical voices active in Germany and Austria during the period between the outbreak of WW1 in 1914 and the end of WW2 in 1945. Among them were Joseph Schwarz (a vocal virtuoso), Heinrich Schlusnus (the owner of an exceptionally beautiful voice), Herbert Janssen, Willi Domgraf-Fassbaender, Karl Schmidt-Walter and Gerhard Hüsch. Their abundant inter-war Italian counterparts included, among others, Carlo Galeffi, Giuseppe Danise, Enrico Molinari, Umberto Urbano, Cesare Formichi, Luigi Montesanto, Apollo Granforte, Benvenuto Franci, Renato Zanelli (who switched to tenor roles in 1924), Mario Basiola, Giovanni Inghilleri, Carlo Morelli (the Chilean-born younger brother of Renato Zanelli) and Carlo Tagliabue. (The last named baritone retired as late as 1958.)
One of the best known Italian Verdi baritones of the 1920s and '30s, Mariano Stabile, sang Iago and Rigoletto and Falstaff (at La Scala) under the baton of Arturo Toscanini. Stabile also appeared in London, Chicago and Salzburg. He was noted more for his histrionic skills than for his voice, however. Stabile was followed by Tito Gobbi, a versatile singing actor capable of vivid comic and tragic performances during the years of his prime in the 1940s, '50s and early '60s. He learned more than 100 roles in his lifetime and was mostly known for his roles in Verdi and Puccini operas, including appearances as Scarpia opposite soprano Maria Callas as Tosca at Covent Garden.
Gobbi's competitors included Gino Bechi, Giuseppe Valdengo, Paolo Silveri, Giuseppe Taddei, Ettore Bastianini and Giangiacomo Guelfi. Another of Gobbi's contemporaries was the Welshman Geraint Evans, who famously sang Falstaff at Glyndebourne and created the roles of Mr. Flint and Mountjoy in works by Benjamin Britten. Some considered his best role to have been Wozzeck. The next significant Welsh baritone was Bryn Terfel. He made his premiere at Glyndebourne in 1990 and went on to build an international career as Falstaff and, more generally, in the operas of Mozart and Wagner.[7]
An outstanding group of virile-voiced American baritones appeared in the 1920s. The younger members of this group were still active as recently as the late 1970s. Outstanding among its members were the Met-based Verdians Lawrence Tibbett (a compelling, rich-voiced singing actor), Richard Bonelli, John Charles Thomas, Robert Weede, Leonard Warren and Robert Merrill. They sang French opera, too, as did the American-born but Paris-based baritone of the 1920s and '30s, Arthur Endreze.
Also to be found singing Verdi roles at the Met, Covent Garden and the Vienna Opera during the late 1930s and the 1940s was the big-voiced Hungarian baritone, Sandor (Alexander) Sved.
The leading Verdi baritones of the 1970s and '80s were probably Italy's Renato Bruson and Piero Cappuccilli, America's Sherrill Milnes, Sweden's Ingvar Wixell and the Romanian baritone Nicolae Herlea. At the same time, Britain's Sir Thomas Allen was considered to be the most versatile baritone of his generation in regards to repertoire, which ranged from Mozart to Verdi, through French and Russian opera, to modern English music. Another British baritone, Norman Bailey, established himself internationally as a memorable Wotan and Hans Sachs. He had, however, a distinguished if lighter-voiced Wagnerian rival during the 1960s and 1970s in the person of Thomas Stewart of America. Other notable post-War Wagnerian baritones have been Canada's George London, Germany's Hermann Uhde and, more recently, America's James Morris.
Among the late 20th century baritones noted throughout the opera world for their Verdi performances was Vladimir Chernov, who emerged from the former USSR to sing at the Met. Chernov followed in the footsteps of such richly endowed East European baritones as Ippolit Pryanishnikov (a favorite of Tchaikovski's), Joachim Tartakov (an Everardi pupil), Oskar Kamionsky (an exceptional bel canto singer nicknamed the "Russian Battistini"), Waclaw Brzezinski (known as the "Polish Battistini"), Georges Baklanoff (a powerful singing actor), and, during a career lasting from 1935 to 1966, the Bolshoi's Pavel Lisitsian. Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Sergei Leiferkus are two Russian baritones of the modern era who appear regularly in the West. Like Lisitsian, they sing Verdi and the works of their native composers, including Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades.
In the realm of French song, the bass-baritone José van Dam and the lighter-voiced Gérard Souzay have been notable. Souzay's repertoire extended from the Baroque works of Jean-Baptiste Lully to 20th century composers such as Francis Poulenc. Pierre Bernac, Souzay's teacher, was an interpreter of Poulenc's songs in the previous generation. Older baritones identified with this style include France's Dinh Gilly and Charles Panzéra and Australia's John Brownlee. Another Australian, Peter Dawson, made a small but precious legacy of benchmark Handel recordings during the 1920s and 1930s. (Dawson, incidentally, acquired his outstanding Handelian technique from Sir Charles Santley.) Yet another Australian baritone of distinction between the wars was Harold Williams, who was based in the United Kingdom. Important British-born baritones of the 1930s and 1940s were Dennis Noble, who sang Italian and English operatic roles, and the Mozartian Roy Henderson. Both appeared often at Covent Garden.
Prior to World War II, Germany's Heinrich Schlusnus, Gerhard Hüsch and Herbert Janssen were celebrated for their beautifully sung lieder recitals as well as for their mellifluous operatic performances in Verdi, Mozart, and Wagner respectively. After the war's conclusion, Hermann Prey and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau appeared on the scene to take their place. In addition to his interpretations of lieder and the works of Mozart, Prey sang in Strauss operas and tackled lighter Wagner roles such as Wolfram. Fischer-Dieskau sang parts in 'fringe' operas by the likes of Ferruccio Busoni and Paul Hindemith as well as appearing in standard works by Verdi and Wagner. He earned his principal renown, however, as a lieder singer. Talented German and Austrian lieder singers of a younger generation include Olaf Bär, Matthias Goerne, Wolfgang Holzmair (who also performs regularly in opera), Thomas Quasthoff, Stephan Genz and Christian Gerhaher. Well-known non-Germanic baritones of recent times have included the Italians Giorgio Zancanaro and Leo Nucci, the Frenchman François le Roux, the Canadian Gerald Finley and James Westman and the versatile American Thomas Hampson, his compatriot Nathan Gunn and the Britisher Simon Keenlyside.
Classification[link]
The baritone voice type is classified according to vocal range and weight into the following subtypes.
Bariton/Baryton-Martin[link]
- Common Range: From the low C to the A♭ above middle C (C3 to A♭4)[8]
- Description: The Baryton-Martin lacks the lower G2–B2 range a heavier baritone is capable of, and has a lighter, almost tenor-like quality. Generally seen only in French repertoire, this fach was named after the French singer Jean-Blaise Martin. Associated with the rise of the baritone in the 19th century, Martin was well known for his fondness for falsetto singing, and the designation 'Baryton Martin' has been used (Faure, 1886) to separate his voice from the 'Verdi Baritone', which carried the chest register further into the upper range.[9] It is important to note that this voice type shares the primo passaggio and secondo passaggio with the Dramatic Tenor and Heldentenor (C4 and F4 respectively), and hence could be trained as a tenor.
- Roles:
- Pelléas, Pelléas et Mélisande (Claude Debussy)
- L'Horloge Comtoise, L'enfant et les sortilèges (Maurice Ravel)
- Orfeo, L'Orfeo (Claudio Monteverdi)
- Ramiro, L'heure espagnole (Maurice Ravel)
- Morales, Carmen (Georges Bizet)
- Singers:
Lyric baritone[link]
- Common Range: From the A below low C to the A♭ or A above middle C (A2 to A♭/A4).
- Description: A sweeter, milder sounding baritone voice, lacking in harshness; lighter and perhaps mellower than the dramatic baritone with a higher tessitura. It is typically assigned to comic roles.
- Roles:
- Count Almaviva, The Marriage of Figaro (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)
- Guglielmo, Così fan tutte (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)
- Don Giovanni, Don Giovanni (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)
- Papageno, The Magic Flute (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)
- Marcello, La bohème (Giacomo Puccini)
- Figaro, The Barber of Seville (Rossini)
- Singers:
[edit] The kavalierbariton
- Common Range: From the A below low C to the G above middle C (A2 to G4).
- Description: A metallic voice, that can sing both lyric and dramatic phrases, a manly noble baritonal color, with good looks. Not quite as powerful as the Verdi baritone who is expected to have a powerful appearance on stage, perhaps muscular or physically large.
- Roles:
- Don Giovanni, Don Giovanni (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)
- Justin Labelle, Wakonda's Dream (Anthony Davis)
- Count, Capriccio (Richard Strauss)
- Giorgio Germont in La traviata (Giuseppe Verdi)
- Singers:
Verdi baritone[link]
- Common Range: From the G below low C to the A♭ above middle C (G2 to A♭4).
- Description: A more specialized voice category and a subset of the Dramatic Baritone, a Verdi baritone refers to a voice capable of singing consistently and with ease in the highest part of the baritone range, sometimes extending up to the C above middle C, or "High C." The Verdi baritone will generally have a lot of squillo, or "ping"
- Roles:
- Amonasro, Aida
- Carlo, Ernani
- Conte di Luna, Il trovatore
- Don Carlo di Vargas, La forza del destino
- Falstaff, Falstaff
- Ford, Falstaff
- Germont, La traviata
- Macbeth, Macbeth
- Renato, Un ballo in maschera
- Rigoletto, Rigoletto
- Rodrigo, Don Carlos
- Simon Boccanegra, Simon Boccanegra
- Singers:
Dramatic baritone[link]
- Common Range: From the G half an octave below low C to the G above middle C (G2 to G4).
- Description: A voice that is richer and fuller, and sometimes harsher, than a lyric baritone and with a darker quality. This category corresponds roughly to the Heldenbariton in the German fach system except that some Verdi baritone roles are not included. The primo passaggio and secondo passaggio of both the Verdi and Dramatic Baritone are at Bb and Eb respectively, hence the differentiation is based more heavily on timbre and tessitura. Accordingly, roles that fall into this category tend to have a slightly lower tessitura than typical Verdi baritone roles, only rising above an F at the moments of greatest intensity. Many of the Puccini roles fall into this category. However, it is important to note, that for all intents and purposes, a Verdi Baritone is simply a Dramatic Baritone with greater ease in the upper tessitura (Verdi Baritone roles center approximately a minor third higher). Because the Verdi Baritone is sometimes seen as subset of the Dramatic Baritone, some singers perform roles from both sets of repertoire. Similarly, the lower tessitura of these roles allow them frequently to be sung by bass-baritones.
- Role
- Jack Rance, La fanciulla del West (Giacomo Puccini)
- Scarpia, Tosca (Giacomo Puccini)
- Nabucco, Nabucco (Giuseppe Verdi)
- Iago, Otello (Giuseppe Verdi)
- Escamillo, Carmen (Bizet)
- Singers:
Lyric Low Baritone/Lyric Bass-baritone[link]
Main article: Bass-baritone
- Common Range: From about the F below low C to the F♯ above middle C (F2 to F#4)
Some bass-baritones are baritones, like Friedrich Schorr, George London, James Morris and Bryn Terfel. The following are more often done by lower baritones as opposed to high basses.
- Roles:
- Don Pizarro, Fidelio by Ludwig van Beethoven
- Golaud, Pelléas et Mélisande by Claude Debussy
- Méphistophélès, Faust by Charles Gounod
- Don Alfonso, Così fan tutte by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
- Figaro, The Marriage of Figaro by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
- Singers:
Dramatic Bass-baritone/Low Baritone[link]
Main article: Bass-baritone
- Common Range: From about the F below low C to the F♯ above middle C (F2 to F#4)
- Roles:
- Aleko, Aleko by Sergei Rachmaninoff
- Igor, Prince Igor by Alexander Borodin
- Dutchman, The Flying Dutchman by Richard Wagner
- Hans Sachs, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg by Richard Wagner
- Wotan, Der Ring des Nibelungen by Richard Wagner
- Amfortas, Parsifal by Richard Wagner
- Singers:
[edit] Baryton-noble
- Description: French for noble baritone and describes a part that requires a noble bearing, smooth vocalisation and forceful declamation, all in perfect balance. This category originated in the Paris Opera, but it greatly influenced Verdi (Don Carlo in Ernani and La forza del destino; Count Luna in Il trovatore; Simon Boccanegra) and Wagner as well (Wotan; Amfortas).
Baritone roles in opera[link]
Baritone roles in Gilbert and Sullivan[link]
|
|
Baritone voices in other music[link]
Main article: List of baritones in non-classical music
In barbershop music, the baritone part sings in a similar range to the Lead (singing the melody) however usually singing lower than the lead. A barbershop baritone has a specific and specialized role in the formation of the four-part harmony that characterizes the style. Because barbershop singers can also be female, there is consequently such a singer (at least in barbershop singing) as a female baritone.
The baritone singer is often the one required to support or "fill" the bass sound (typically by singing the fifth above the bass root) and to complete a chord. On the other hand, the baritone will occasionally find himself harmonizing above the melody, which calls for a tenor-like quality. Because the baritone fills the chord, the part is often not very melodic.
In bluegrass music, the melody line is called the lead. Tenor is sung an interval of a third above the lead. Baritone is the fifth of the scale that has the lead as a tonic, and may be sung below the lead, or even above the lead (and the tenor), in which case it is called "high baritone". Conversely, the more "soul" baritones have the more traditional timbre, but sing in a vocal range that is closer to the tenor vocal range. Some of these singers include Tom Jones[10] Michael McDonald,[11] and Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops.[12]
References[link]
- ^ Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Encyclopedia. "Baritone". Merriam-Webster (2000) p. 142. ISBN 0-87779-017-5
- ^ Franchino Gaffurio, Practica musicae, liber tertius, 1496
- ^ Owen Jander, J. B. Steane, Elizabeth Forbes, Ellen T. Harris, and Gerald Waldman, 'Baritone (i)', in Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (eds.), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edition, Macmillan, 2001. ISBN 0-333-60800-3. This work is the main reference for the history section of this article.
- ^ Dolmetsch Online, Music Dictionary Vm-Vz, accessed May 28, 2006
- ^ Moss, Charles K. "Franz Peter Schubert: Master of Song". Archived from the original on February 8, 2008. http://web.archive.org/web/20080208161913/http://www.carolinaclassical.com/articles/schubert.html. Retrieved July 13, 2010.
- ^ History of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden. Retrieved 4 March 2008
- ^ Deutsche Grammophon, Bryn Terfel's Biographical Timeline, accessed May 28, 2006
- ^ John Warrack and Ewan West, The Oxford Dictionary of Opera, 2nd edition, 1992. ISBN 0-19-869164-5
- ^ Owen Jander, J.B. Steane, Elizabeth Forbes, Ellen T. Harris, and Gerald Waldman, 'Baritone (i)', in Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (eds.), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edition, Macmillan, 2001
- ^ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, "Jones, Tom", Popular Artist Biographies, All Media Guide.
- ^ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, "Biography: Michael McDonald", All Media Guide.
- ^ Stars mourn Four Tops star Stubbs, BBC News, 28 October 2008.
Further sources[link]
 |
Look up Baritone in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
 |
Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Barytone. |
Media related to Baritones at Wikimedia Commons
- Faure, Jean-Baptiste (1886) La voix et le chant: traité pratique, Heugel, published in English translation as The Voice and Singing (Francis Keeping and Roberta Prada, translators), Vox Mentor, 2005.
- Matheopoulos, H. (1989) Bravo – The World's Great Male Singers Discuss Their Roles, Victor Gollancz Ltd.
- Bruder, Harold, Liner Notes, Maurice Renaud: The Complete Gramophone Recordings 1901–1908, Marston Records, 1997. (Discusses Renaud and many of his baritone contemporaries as well the stylistic change in operatic singing at the turn of the 20th century.) Retrieved 4 March 2008.
http://wn.com/Baritone
Related pages:
http://it.wn.com/Baritono
http://cs.wn.com/Baryton
http://id.wn.com/Bariton
http://es.wn.com/Barítono
http://ru.wn.com/Баритон
http://nl.wn.com/Bariton (zangstem)
http://pl.wn.com/Baryton
http://fr.wn.com/Baryton (voix)
http://de.wn.com/Bariton (Stimmlage)
http://pt.wn.com/Barítono
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baritone
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
Simon Keenlyside CBE (born 3 August 1959) is a British baritone who has had an active international career performing in operas and concerts since the mid 1980s.
Contents |
Biography[link]
Early life and education[link]
Keenlyside was born in London, the son of Raymond and Ann Keenlyside. Raymond played second violin in the Aeolian Quartet, and Ann's father was the violinist Leonard Hirsch. When he was eight, he was enrolled in St John's College School, a boarding school for the child choristers of the Choir of St John's College, Cambridge and spent much of his childhood touring and recording with the choir under the direction of choirmaster George Guest.[1]
Keenlyside read zoology at Cambridge University, returning to St John's as a choral scholar, before studying singing at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. After graduation, he won a Peter Moores Foundation scholarship (1985) and chose to join the Royal Northern College of Music to study voice with the baritone John Cameron under whom he developed a love for lieder and German poetry. Keenlyside later said of him:
Everyone has to trust a teacher and I trusted John. It is possible to make the Faustian pact of beefing up your voice young. You might survive, but many talented young voices have been ruined. John always said "don't push it, sing your age". That can be very frustrating. You just have to trust that nature will eventually grant you heft.[2]
Singing career[link]
Keenlyside made his first appearance in a major operatic role in 1987 as Lescaut in Manon Lescaut at the Royal Northern College of Music. Opera magazine remarked on it being an "astonishingly mature" performance, and that he "used his warm and clear baritone with notable musicianship".[3] The Richard Tauber prize, which he won in 1986, allowed him to go to Salzburg for further study. His money ran out before he could finish his four month term there, but Rudolf Knoll, a teacher at the Salzburg Mozarteum, gave him private lessons for free. Knoll encouraged him to work on the Italian repertoire while he was still young, and introduced him to the Hilbert agency which got him singing jobs in Germany. His professional debut as a baritone came in 1988, at the Hamburg State Opera as Count Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro.[1]
In 1989, Keenlyside joined the roster of Scottish Opera, where he stayed until 1994, performing as, among other roles, Marcello (La bohème), Danilo (The Merry Widow), Harlequin (Ariadne auf Naxos), Guglielmo (Così fan tutte), Figaro (Barber of Seville), Billy Budd (Billy Budd), Papageno (Zauberflöte) and Belcore (L'elisir d'amore).
During this period, he made debut performances at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, (1989 singing Silvio), English National Opera (Guglielmo), Welsh National Opera, San Francisco Opera, Geneva, Paris, and Sydney. He sang for Glyndebourne for the first time in 1993 and made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1996. Keenlyside has performed at virtually all the major opera houses in the world, including the Paris Opera and the Metropolitan Opera.
Keenlyside sang in the world premieres of two 21st century operas, creating the roles of Prospero in Thomas Adès' The Tempest in 2004, and Winston Smith in Lorin Maazel's 1984 in 2005 .[4]
His recordings include several issues for Hyperion Records, including music of Benjamin Britten, Emmanuel Chabrier, Maurice Duruflé and Henry Purcell. He is also a featured singer on five volumes of the Hyperion Franz Schubert Edition and on the second volume of the Hyperion Robert Schumann Edition. He participated in the EMI Classics world premiere recording of The Tempest.[5] In 2007 Sony Music released a recital disc of arias entitled Tales of Opera.[6]
Personal life[link]
Keenlyside is married to the Royal Ballet dancer Zenaida Yanowsky.[2]
Operatic roles[link]
- Winston Smith in 1984 [4][7]
- Harlequin in Ariadne auf Naxos [8]
- Ubalde in Armide [9]
- Figaro and Fiorello in The Barber of Seville [10]
- Billy Budd and Donald in Billy Budd [11]
- Marcello and Schaunard in La bohème [11]
- Catechiste in Briséïs [12]
- Mercurio in La Calisto [13]
- Olivier in Capriccio [14]
- Morales in Carmen [15]
- Dandini in La Cenerentola [16]
- Guglielmo in Così fan tutte [17]
- Abayaldos in Dom Sébastien [11]
- Posa and Flemish Deputy in Don Carlos [11]
- Don Giovanni in Don Giovanni [17]
- Belcore in L'elisir d'amore [9]
- Onegin in Eugene Onegin [18]
- Ford in Falstaff [11]
- Valentin and Wagner in Faust [11]
- Prisoner in Fidelio [19]
- Falke in Die Fledermaus [20]
- Hamlet in Ambroise Thomas' Hamlet [11]
- Oreste in Iphigénie en Tauride [11]
- Macbeth in Macbeth [4]
- Gendarme/Le directeur in Les Mamelles de Tirésias [21]
- Lescaut in Manon Lescaut [22]
- Count Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro [9]
- Nightwatchman in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg [23]
- Danilo in The Merry Widow [24]
- Orfeo in Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, favola in musica [25]
- Montano in Verdi's Otello [15]
- Silvio in Pagliacci [26]
- Pelléas in Pelléas et Mélisande [11]
- Ned Keene in Peter Grimes [27]
- Prince Yeletski in The Queen of Spades [28]
- Tarquinius in The Rape of Lucretia [29]
- Rigoletto in Rigoletto [30]
- Arthus in Le Roi Arthus [31]
- Wolfram in Tannhäuser [32]
- Prospero in The Tempest [4]
- Giorgio Germont in Traviata [33]
- Steersman in Tristan und Isolde [15]
- Ping in Turandot [11]
- Andrei in Prokofiev's War and Peace [34]
- Wozzeck in Wozzeck [4]
- Papageno in Die Zauberflöte [9]
Honours and awards[link]
- 1986: Richard Tauber Prize[2]
- 1987: Winner of the Walther Grüner International Lieder competition[citation needed]
- 1990: First Prize, Elly Ameling competition[35]
- 1994: Singer of the Year Award from the Royal Philharmonic Society[36]
- 2003: CBE in the Queen's Birthday honours list "for services to Music"[37]
- 2004: Opera Award for the category Best Baritone (Don Giovanni, Théâtre de la Monnaie) from the Italian magazine L'Opera.[38]
- 2004: XII Premios de la Crítica award to Simon Keenlyside and Natalie Dessay in Hamlet) for the best male and female singers in a staged opera.[39]
- 2005: Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording Marriage of Figaro[40]
- 2006: Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera, for his work in the ROH production of 1984 and ENO's Billy Budd in 2005.[41] He was a nominee for this award in 2004 for The Royal Opera's Hamlet and Die Zauberflote.[42]
- 2007: ECHO Klassik Award, Singer of the Year (male)[43]
- 2007: XV Premios de la Crítica award for Best Recital Artist[44]
- 2007: Gramophone Award, Best of Category (Recital) for his debut recital album Tales of Opera[6]
- 2010: Gramophone Award, Best of Category (Contemporary) for the CD The Tempest, singing Prospero[45]
- 2011: Musical America's Vocalist of the Year award[46]
References[link]
- ^ a b Kellow, Brian (December 2002). "The Poetry of Risk". Opera News, Vol. 67, No. 6
- ^ a b c Wroe, Nicholas (8 September 2007). "The call of the wild". The Guardian. http://music.guardian.co.uk/classical/story/0,,2164523,00.html. Retrieved 2007-09-08.
- ^ Allison, John (2002). Baritones in Opera: Profiles of Fifteen Great Baritones, p. 81. Opera Magazine Ltd.
- ^ a b c d e Duchen, Jessica (12 March 2007)."Simon Keenlyside: The sound and the fury". The Independent
- ^ James Inverne, "EMI to release Adés’s The Tempest". Gramophone, 20 March 2007.
- ^ a b Gramophone (2007).Awards Special Issue, p. 61
- ^ For a complete list of Keenlyside's roles see also List of roles at www.simonkeenlyside.info
- ^ Kesting, Jürgen (2008). Die grossen Sänger, Vol. 4, p. 2065. Hoffmann und Campe (German)
- ^ a b c d La Scala. Archives: Keenlyside (Subscription required)
- ^ White, Michael (14 May 2003). "Sweet prince of song". Daily Telegraph
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Royal Opera House. Archives: Keenlyside
- ^ Luten, C. J., (January 1996). Recording Review: Chabrier's Briseis by Rodgers, Harries, Padmore, Keenlyside, George and the BBC Scottish Orchestra and Chamber Chorus under Jean Yves Ossonce. Opera News (Subscription required)
- ^ Gramophone (September 1995). Review: Harmonia Mundi CD HMC90 1515/7 (1996 live recording from Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie), p. 103
- ^ Metropolitan Opera. Archives: Keenlyside, Simon (Baritone)
- ^ a b c Milnes, Rodney (November 1997) "Simon Keenlyside". Opera, Vol. 53, Issue 1, pp. 80-87
- ^ Listed in the cast for the performances at the Opéra Garnier in September 1998. See L'Événement du jeudi, Issues 718-725, p. 82 (French)
- ^ a b Glyndebourne Festival Opera. Archives: Keenlyside
- ^ Jahn, George (7 March 2009). "Splendid music, but the staging – brrr!". Associated Press
- ^ Listed in projected cast for the performances at the Royal Opera House in November-December 1990. See Opera, Vol. 41, Issues 7-12, p. 1201
- ^ Loveland, Kenneth (December 1991). Review: Die Fledermaus, Welsh National Opera, New Theatre, Cardiff, Opera, Volume 42, p. 1479
- ^ Listed in the cast for the concert performances at Birmingham Symphony Hall and the Queen Elisabeth Hall (March 1995). See Opera, Vol. 45, Issues 7-12, p. 1299
- ^ Smith, Mike (25 April 2008). "From Turandot to tree-planting with opera singer Simon Keenlyside". Western Mail
- ^ One of his earliest roles. According to simonkeenlyside.info, he sang this at the Hamburg State Opera in June 1988.
- ^ Tumelty, Michael (20 September 1989). "Review: Theatre Royal, Glasgow, The Merry Widow", p. 14. Glasgow Herald
- ^ Sulcas, Roslyn (28 June 1998). "Master of Movement Decides to Tell a Story With an Opera". New York Times
- ^ Jampol, Joshua (2010). Living Opera. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-538138-6
- ^ Blyth, Alan (June 1996). "Taking off". Gramophone, p. 23
- ^ Radio Canada. Opéra du samedi, Calendrier de diffusion, Saison 1998-1999 (French)
- ^ Monelle, Raymond (23 August 1999). "Edinburgh: This tragic no man's land". The Independent
- ^ Evans, Eian (27 June 2010). "Review: Rigoletto, Millennium Centre, Cardiff". The Guardian
- ^ Tanner, Michael (9 September 2000). "Brighter shades of pale". The Spectator
- ^ Western European stages, Volume 15 (2003), p. 42. Center for Advanced Study in Theatre Arts
- ^ Bayerische Staatsoper (2009) Cast list: La Traviata, 12 June 2009 (German)
- ^ Christiansen, Rupert (1 November 2001). Review: "War and Peace ENO, Coliseum – All-conquering confidence". Daily Telegraph
- ^ Kennedy, Michael (1994). Music Enriches All: The Royal Northern College of Music : The First Twenty-one Years, p. 77. Carcanet. ISBN 1-85754-085-9
- ^ Royal Philharmonic Society. Past RPS Music Awards Winners: Singers
- ^ BBC News (29 October 2003). "TV chef collects MBE"
- ^ L'Opera (December 2004)
- ^ Avui (20 October 2004) "Siegfried, millor òpera de la temporada anterior", p. 46 (Catalan)
- ^ Associated Press (13 February 2005). "Pre-telecast Grammy Award winners". USA Today
- ^ Laurence Olivier Awards (26 February 2006). "Keenlyside wins opera prize", www.olivierawards.com
- ^ Associated Press (15 January 2004)"Complete list of nominees for the 2004 Laurence Olivier Awards" (Subscription required)
- ^ Merkur (22 October 2007). "Echo Klassik für Elina Garanca, Keenlyside und Jansons" (German)
- ^ ABC (11 October 2007). "«Boulevard Solitude», de Henze, se impone en los premios de la crítica" (Spanish)
- ^ Gramophone (30 September 2010). "Gramophone Awards 2010 unveiled"
- ^ Waleson, Heidi (2011). "The 2011 Honorees: Simon Keenlyside, Vocalist of the Year". Musical America
External links[link]
- simonkeenlyside.info – Biography, schedule, discography, media database
- Television interview with Simon Keenlyside on C Music TV
- Simon Keenlyside on Askonas Holt Artists' Management
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Keenlyside, Simon |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | |
| Date of birth | 3 August 1959 |
| Place of birth | |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
http://wn.com/Simon_Keenlyside
Related pages:
http://fr.wn.com/Simon Keenlyside
http://de.wn.com/Simon Keenlyside
http://it.wn.com/Simon Keenlyside
http://es.wn.com/Simon Keenlyside
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Keenlyside
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
| Pablo Francisco | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Pablo Ridson Francisco |
| Born | (1974-01-05) January 5, 1974 (age 38) Tucson, Arizona, U.S. |
| Medium | Stand-up |
| Nationality | American |
| Years active | 1994–present |
| Genres | Impressions |
| Subject(s) | Latin American culture, everyday life, movies |
| Influences | Steve Martin, Richard Pryor, Benny Hill |
| Notable works and roles |
MADtv and |
| Website | Official website |
 |
This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (November 2010) |
Pablo Ridson Francisco (born January 5, 1974) is an American stand-up comedian of Chilean origin.[1] He started his career doing improv in Tempe, Arizona.
Contents |
Career[link]
In the 1990s, he appeared on MADtv as a featured player. His stand-up act was introduced to America at large when he landed his own half-hour comedy special on Comedy Central Presents in 2000. In 2001 and 2002, Francisco toured as part of "The Three Amigos" with Carlos Mencia and Freddy Soto. Since then, he has performed on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, VH1's ILL-ustrated, Mind of Mencia as "The Voiceover Dude" (same as "Movie Voiceover Guy"), and most recently, Frank TV.
Francisco is recognized for vocal impressions of famous people including Jackie Chan, Aaron Neville, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Howard Stern, Casey Kasem, Keanu Reeves, Michael J. Fox, Jerry Springer, Don Lapre, Celine Dion, William Hung, Danny Glover, Gary Busey, and most notably Don LaFontaine (the Movie Voiceover King). As well, he also does sound effects and character voices like Count Dracula (as a Spanish Radio DeeJay), Droopy Dog, Chris Rock, Jimi Hendrix, Tony Montana, R2-D2, Kermit the Frog, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Ozzy Osbourne, Ricky Martin, Dennis Hopper, Aladdin, George Clooney, Dennis Haysbert, Anthony Sullivan, Christopher Walken, and Mr. Magoo. He also has a talent for beatboxing.
Francisco tours in Southern California. The Improv at the Irvine Spectrum Center is where his 2004 DVD Bits and Pieces was filmed. On December 31, 2005, he hosted a New Years Eve party at the Irvine Improv. In 2004 his stand up material was used in Comedy Central's animated series Shorties Watchin' Shorties.
Television appearances[link]
- MADtv
- Make Me Laugh
- The Tonight Show With Jay Leno
- VH1's ILL-ustrated
- Mind Of Mencia (as The Voiceover Dude)
- Frank TV
- Vakna Med The Voice (Swedish TV)
- Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal
- Last Comic Standing
- The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (1992 TV series)
- Tonight With Trevor Noah
- Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
Specials[link]
- Knee To The Groin (Album) - 1998
- Sausage (Album) - 2000
- Comedy Central Presents - 2000
- The Three Amigos (with Carlos Mencia and Freddy Soto) - 2002
- Bits and Pieces - 2004, DVD
- Ouch! - 2006, DVD
- They Put it Out There - 2011, DVD
References[link]
External links[link]
- Official website
- Pablo Francisco at the Internet Movie Database
- Pablo Francisco at MySpace
- Profile at Latino Comedy
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Francisco, Pablo |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | |
| Date of birth | January 5, 1974 |
| Place of birth | Tucson, Arizona, U.S. |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
http://wn.com/Pablo_Francisco
Related pages:
http://pl.wn.com/Pablo Francisco
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Francisco
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
Thomas Quasthoff (born November 9, 1959) is a German bass-baritone. Although his reputation was initially based on his performance of Romantic lieder, Quasthoff has proven to have a remarkable range from the Baroque cantatas of Bach to solo jazz improvisations.
Biography[link]
Quasthoff was born in Hildesheim, Germany, with serious birth defects caused by his mother's exposure during pregnancy to the drug thalidomide which was prescribed as an antiemetic to combat her morning sickness. Thomas Quasthoff is 4' 4¾" (1.34 m) [1] tall due to shortening of the long bones in his legs, and he has phocomelia of the upper extremities with very short or absent long bones.
Quasthoff was denied admission to the music conservatory in Hanover, Germany, owing to his physical inability to play the piano, rather than a lack of skill required for entry to the conservatory. In the early stages of his education as a singer, Quasthoff was promoted by Sebastian Peschko.[1] Thus, he chose to study voice privately. He also studied law for three years.[2] Prior to his music career, he worked six years as a radio announcer for NDR. He also did voice-over work for television.[3]
His music career was launched in 1988 when he won ARD International Music Competition in Munich, earning praise from the baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. In 1995, he made his American debut at the Oregon Bach Festival at the invitation of artistic director Helmuth Rilling; in 1998, he was one of the soloists for the Bach Festival's world-premiere of Krzyztof Penderecki's Credo, the recording of which won a Grammy Award for best choral recording. In 2003, he made his staged operatic debut as Don Fernando in Beethoven's Fidelio at the Salzburg Festival. conducted by Simon Rattle. His San Francisco Symphony debut took place September 2004.
Thomas Quasthoff won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Vocal Performance in 2000. It was for his performance together with the mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter of Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn. They were accompanied by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Claudio Abbado. He won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Vocal Performance for the second time in 2004. It was for Schubert: Lieder with Orchestra which Quasthoff performed with von Otter and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe conducted by Abbado. Quasthoff won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Vocal Performance for the third time in 2006 with Rainer Kussmaul leading members of the RIAS Chamber Choir of Berlin Baroque Soloists in their recording of J. S. Bach: Cantatas.
Additionally, Quasthoff's recordings of the songs of Brahms, Liszt and Schubert accompanied by pianist Justus Zeyen were nominated for the Grammy in 2000 and 2001. Thomas Quasthoff records for Deutsche Grammophon.
Quasthoff is a full-time voice professor and performs only about 50 times a year. He is currently a professor at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin; he previously taught at the music academy of Detmold, Germany.
For the 2006-2007 concert season, Quasthoff was one of Carnegie Hall's "Perspectives" artists.[4] However, illness forced him to cancel his first two appearances in that capacity.[5]
In 2006 he recorded his first jazz album, The Jazz Album: Watch What Happens, with Till Brönner, Alan Broadbent, Peter Erskine, Dieter Ilg and Chuck Loeb. In the same year he married Claudia Schtelsick, a German TV journalist.
In 2008, he was a soloist on the Grammy-winning recording of Brahms's Ein Deutsches Requiem (Simon Rattle, conductor; Simon Halsey, chorus master) on EMI Classics.
As "artist in residence" at the Barbican Hall, London, Quasthoff invited some of his favourite fellow artists in a series under the title "Die Stimme" - The Voice (also the name of his autobiography) which marks his 50th birthday year. He was the "Desert Island Discs" guest (BBC Radio 4) on 1 February 2009 (repeated 6 February 2009).
In 2009, Quasthoff was awarded the Herbert von Karajan Music Prize.
According to an interview given in 2003, Quasthoff revealed that he is active in political thinking, is a socialist, and opposed the Iraq War and the actions taken by Israel in regard to the building of the Israeli West Bank barrier.[6]
As of January 11, 2012, Quasthoff confirmed his decision to quit singing, citing persistent health reasons.[7]
References[link]
- ^ Michael Quasthoff: Thomas Quasthoff – Der Bariton, Henschel Verlag , Berlin, 2006, S. 46−47, ISBN 978-3-89487-545-9.
- ^ Stephen Moss, 'I'm lucky. Everyone can see my disability'. The Guardian, 20 October 2000.
- ^ Peter Conrad, "More, much more than this...". The Observer, 7 April 2002.
- ^ Jay Nordlinger, "Scatting & Growling His Way Through". New York Sun, 9 March 2007.
- ^ Allan Kozinn, "Put Me Out There, Coach. I’m Ready to Sing." New York Times, 7 March 2007.
- ^ http://www.andante.com/article/article.cfm?id=25239
- ^ http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2012/01/heartbreaking-news-thomas-quasthoff-confirms-that-he-has-sung-for-the-last-time.html
External links[link]
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Thomas Quasthoff |
|
|||||
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Quasthoff, Thomas |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | |
| Date of birth | 9 November 1959 |
| Place of birth | |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
http://wn.com/Thomas_Quasthoff
Related pages:
http://ru.wn.com/Квастхофф, Томас
http://fr.wn.com/Thomas Quasthoff
http://de.wn.com/Thomas Quasthoff
http://it.wn.com/Thomas Quasthoff
http://pl.wn.com/Thomas Quasthoff
http://es.wn.com/Thomas Quasthoff
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Quasthoff
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
| Sherrill Milnes | |
|---|---|
_and_Roberti_(left),_Festival_Puccini,_Torre_del_Lago_(1997).jpg) Sherrill Milnes (right) as Baron Scarpia in Tosca (Festival Puccini, 1997) |
|
| Born | January 10, 1935 Downers Grove, Illinois |
Sherrill Milnes (born January 10, 1935) is an American operatic baritone most famous for his Verdi roles. From 1965 until 1997 he was associated with the Metropolitan Opera.
His voice is a high dramatic baritone, combining good legato with an incisive rhythmic style; furthermore, he has a commanding and handsome stage presence. By 1965 he had made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera. His international debuts followed soon thereafter, and Milnes became one of the world's prominent Verdi baritones of the 1970s and 1980s.
He has been a prolific recording artist, often in partnership with Plácido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti.
Contents |
Early life[link]
Milnes was born in Downers Grove, Illinois to a dairy farmer and his wife. As a child, he exhibited strong and varied musical talents. In addition to singing, he also played piano, violin, viola, double bass, clarinet, and tuba. Although his interests did not always lean toward opera, he spent many hours singing to his father's cows and was once found on a tractor practicing an operatic laugh.
While in high school, Milnes planned to be an anesthesiologist, but later returned to music, studying music education at Drake University and Northwestern University, with the idea of becoming a teacher. After graduating, he spent a summer as an apprentice at the Santa Fe Opera and thereafter dedicated himself to becoming an opera singer, studying briefly with the famed soprano Rosa Ponselle.
Career[link]
Milnes began his career with the Opera Company of Boston in 1960, joining Boris Goldovsky's Opera Theater, and debuting as Masetto in Don Giovanni. From very early on in his career, Milnes was managed by well known talent manager Herbert Barrett. In 1961, he made his debut at Ponselle's Baltimore Opera as Gérard in Andrea Chénier.
In 1964, Milnes made his first major breakthrough singing the role of Valentin in Gounod's Faust at the New York City Opera (opposite Norman Treigle as Mephisto), the role with which he also made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 1965. In 1967 he created the role of Captain Adam Brant in the world premiere of Marvin David Levy's Mourning Becomes Electra at the Met.
In 1964, Milnes also made his European debut singing Figaro from The Barber of Seville at the Teatro Nuovo in Milan. However, it was his performance as Miller in Verdi's Luisa Miller in 1968 which catapulted him into international fame.
In the early 1980s, Milnes experienced vocal health problems, but he eventually surmounted them. In 1984 he sang in the world premiere of Act I of Sergei Rachmaninoff's opera Monna Vanna, which had been left in piano score by the composer and orchestrated by Igor Buketoff.
Milnes was awarded Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia fraternity's Charles E. Lutton Man of Music Award at its 1982 national convention in Urbana, Illinois. He had been initiated into the Fraternity's Alpha Beta chapter at Drake University in 1954.
On July 5, 1986, he performed on the New York Philharmonic's tribute to the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty, which was televised live on ABC Television.[1]. The orchestra, conducted by Zubin Mehta, performed in Central Park.
In September 1996 Milnes was honored by the French government with the distinguished Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.[2] In 1998, Milnes published a memoir, American Aria.
Starting in 2001, Milnes has been bringing his experience and expertise to young rising operatic talent through V.O.I.C.E. (Vocal and Operatic Intensive Creative Experience), which he founded in 2001 with his third wife, Maria Zouves. Their workshops allow educators and performers to share their knowledge through master classes, private coachings, presentations, one-on-one consultations, lectures, and performances. They strive to create a realistic view of the many challenges that singers face throughout their career. The auditor program allows both opera lovers and singers a unique interaction in the creative process.
Milnes is currently a professor emeritus in voice at Northwestern University. He is a recipient of Yale University's Sanford Medal. He is Artistic Advisor to Opera Tampa (FL).[3]
He is a National Patron of Delta Omicron, an international professional music fraternity.[4]
Milnes has been a resident of Cresskill, New Jersey.[5]
Discography[link]
Cassettes[link]
- Essential Opera
- A Grand Night for Singing (Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Columbia Symphony – Ottley, cond.)
- Opera's Greatest Duets
- Sherrill Milnes at the Met
Compact Discs[link]
- 1967
- Mozart: Così fan tutte (with L. Price, Troyanos, Raskin, Shirley, Flagello – Leinsdorf, cond.)
- Verdi: La traviata (with Caballé, Bergonzi – Prêtre, cond.)
- 1968
- R. Strauss: Salome (with Caballé, R. Lewis, Resnik, J. King – Leinsdorf, cond.)
- 1969
- Beethoven: Symphony No. 9, "Choral" (with J. Marsh, Veasey, Domingo – Leinsdorf, cond.)
- Orff: Carmina Burana (with Mandac, Kolk – Ozawa, cond.)
- Verdi: Il trovatore (with L. Price, Domingo, Cossotto – Mehta, cond.)
- 1970
- Verdi: Aïda (with L. Price, Domingo, Bumbry, Raimondi – Leinsdorf, cond.)
- Verdi: Macbeth (with Ludwig, Cossutta – Böhm, cond.) Live recording
- 1971
- Great Opera Duets (with Domingo)
- Verdi: Un ballo in maschera (with Tebaldi, Pavarotti—Bartoletti, cond.)
- Puccini: Il tabarro (with L. Price, Domingo—Leinsdorf, cond.)
- Verdi: Don Carlos (with Domingo, Caballé, Raimondi, Verrett—Giulini, cond.)
- Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor (with Sutherland, Pavarotti, Ghiaurov—Bonynge, cond.)
- Leoncavallo: Pagliacci / Puccini: Il tabarro (Pagliacci: with Caballé, Domingo—Santi, cond. / Il tabarro: with L. Price, Domingo—Leinsdorf, cond.)
- Verdi: Rigoletto (with Sutherland, Pavarotti, Tourangeau, Talvela—Bonynge, cond.)
- 1972
- Verdi: Attila (with Raimondi, Deutekom, Bergonzi—Gardelli, cond.)
- Verdi: Giovanna d'Arco (with Caballé, Domingo—Levine, cond.)
- 1973
- Domingo Conducts Milnes – Milnes Conducts Domingo
- Puccini: Tosca (with L. Price, Domingo – Mehta, cond.)
- 1974
- Puccini: La bohème (with Caballé, Domingo, Blegen, Sardinero, Raimondi – Solti, cond.)
- Verdi: I vespri siciliani (with Arroyo, Domingo, Raimondi – Levine, cond.)
- 1975
- Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia (with Sills, Gedda, Capecchi, Raimondi, Barbieri – Levine, cond.)
- Verdi: Luisa Miller (with Pavarotti, Caballé – Maag, cond.)
- Massenet's La Navarraise (with Horne, Domingo, Bacquier – H. Lewis, cond.)
- Verdi: Il trovatore [with bonus tracks from a 1968 recording of Act II with Richard Tucker] (with Caballé, Cossutta, Arkhipova – Guadagno, cond.)
- 1976
- Giordano: Andrea Chénier (with Scotto, Domingo – Levine, cond.)
- Verdi: Macbeth (with Cossotto, Carreras, Raimondi – Muti, cond.)
- Massenet: Thaïs (with Sills, Gedda, van Allan – Maazel, cond.)
- 1977
- Cilea: Adriana Lecouvreur (with Scotto, Domingo, Obraztsova – Levine, cond.)
- Bizet: Carmen (with Berganza, Domingo, Cotrubas – C. Abbado, cond.)
- Puccini: La fanciulla del West (with Neblett, Domingo – Mehta, cond.)
- Verdi: La forza del destino (with L. Price, Domingo, Cossotto, Giaiotti, Bacquier – Levine, cond.)
- Verdi: La traviata (with Cotrubas, Domingo – Kleiber, cond.)
- 1978
- Bravissimo, Domingo! Arias and Duets with Leontyne Price and Sherrill Milnes
- Rossini: Guglielmo Tell (with Freni, Pavarotti, Mazzoli, Jones, Ghiaurov – Chailly, cond.)
- Verdi: Otello (with Scotto, Domingo – Levine, cond.)
- Verdi: Rigoletto (with Sills, Kraus, M. Dunn, Ramey – Rudel, cond.)
- Puccini: Tosca (with Freni, Pavarotti – Rescigno, cond.)
- 1979
- Puccini: La bohème (with Scotto, Neblett, Kraus, Manuguerra, Plishka, Tajo; Levine, cond.)
- 1980
- Massenet: Le roi de Lahore (with Sutherland, Lima, Ghiaurov, Morris, Tourangeau – Bonynge, cond.)
- 1981
- Ponchielli: La Gioconda (with Caballé, Baltsa, Pavarotti, Ghiaurov – Bartoletti, cond.)
- 1986
- Ponchielli: La Gioconda (with Marton, Ramey, Lamberti – Patanè, cond.)
- 1990
- Fauré: Requiem (with Te Kanawa – Dutoit, cond.)
- 2001
- Wolf-Ferrari: Sly (with Carreras, Kabatu – Gimenez, cond.)
Recitals[link]
- Sherrill Milnes in Recital, Volume 1, "There but for You Go I" (Jon Spong, piano)
- Sherrill Milnes in Recital, Volume 2, "Kingdom by the Sea" (Jon Spong, piano)
- Met Legends: Sherrill Milnes
- Grandi Voci: Arias (de la Fuente, cond.)
- The Baritone Voice
- Copland: Old American Songs
- Griffes: Four German Songs; Songs of the Dagger (Ozawa, cond.)
DVDs[link]
- 1976
- Puccini: Tosca (with Kabaivanska, Domingo – Bartoletti, cond., de Bosio, dir.)
- 1979
- Verdi: Luisa Miller (with Scotto, Domingo, Morris; Levine, cond., Merrill, dir.)
- 1980
- Verdi: Don Carlos (Scotto, Troyanos, Moldoveanu, Plishka, Hines; Levine, cond., Dexter, dir.)
- 1983
- Verdi: Ernani (with L. Mitchell, Pavarotti, Raimondi – Levine, cond., Samaritani, dir.)
- 1984
- Verdi: Simon Boccanegra (with Tomowa-Sintow, Moldoveanu, Plishka – Levine, cond., Capobianco, dir.)
- 1985
- Verdi: Nabucco (with Bumbry, Cortez, Raimondi – Santi, cond.)
- Sherrill Milnes: An All-Star Gala (various artists)
- 1986
- Sherrill Milnes at Juilliard: An Opera Master Class
- 1988
- Verdi: Il trovatore (with Marton, Zajick, Pavarotti – Levine, cond., Melano, dir.)
- 1989
- Verdi: Aïda (with Millo, Zajick, Domingo – Levine, cond., Frisell, dir.)
- 1991
- Met's 25th Anniversary Gala at Lincoln Center (various artists)
- 1992
- Puccini: La fanciulla del West (with Daniels, Domingo – Slatkin, cond., del Monaco, dir.)
- 1996
- James Levine 25th Anniversary Gala (various artists)
References[link]
- Biographical information from the biography on www.geocities.com/semilnes/home.html
- ^ "Liberty Receives Classical Salute, Sun Sentinel, July 5, 1986". http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1986-07-05/features/8602090161_1_liberty-weekend-liberty-festivities-great-lawn.
- ^ "The Winners of the 2008 OPERA NEWS Awards are…". Metropolitan Opera, Opera News. 4 August 2008. http://www.metoperafamily.org/operanews/news/pressrelease.aspx?id=1536. Retrieved 20 March 2009.
- ^ Leading clarinetist to receive Sanford Medal
- ^ Delta Omicron
- ^ Milnes, Sherrill; McGovern, Dennis. "American aria: encore", p. 33, Hal Leonard Corporation, 2007. ISBN 1-57467-160-X. Accessed February 21, 2011.
External links[link]
- Bio and discography
- Official V.O.I.C. Experience Website
- Northwestern University Notable Alumni Website
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Milnes, Sherrill |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | Opera singer |
| Date of birth | January 10, 1935 |
| Place of birth | Downers Grove, Illinois |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
http://wn.com/Sherrill_Milnes
Related pages:
http://fr.wn.com/Sherrill Milnes
http://nl.wn.com/Sherrill Milnes
http://pt.wn.com/Sherrill Milnes
http://de.wn.com/Sherrill Milnes
http://it.wn.com/Sherrill Milnes
http://pl.wn.com/Sherrill Milnes
http://es.wn.com/Sherrill Milnes
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherrill_Milnes
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
