The complete idiot's guide to classical music (52 page)

Thus far, we have concentrated on singers of past eras, along with some comparatively recent retirees from the performing arena. There are, however, many illustrious artists who have stepped back from most, in some cases all, of their operatic work but continue to perform in recital. What an astonishing list it is, with (to list only some of the Americans) such national treasures as Robert Merrill, Jerome Hines, Martina Arroyo, Roberta Peters, Anna Moffo, Grace Bumbry, Shirley Verrett, Evelyn Lear, and Thomas Stewart.

Each deserves a separate chapter and more, but since we must narrow the list down to a precious few, let us cite two of the radiant women who have taken American artistry around the world and back again.

Leontyne Price (1927–) was born in Laurel, Mississippi, at a time when a young black girl had little hope of becoming an opera star. Her father worked at a sawmill while her mother, who possessed a beautiful soprano voice, was a midwife whose earnings helped pay the installments on the family piano. The young Leontyne studied piano, sang at local concerts, and pursued her vocal studies at college, but it was not until she won a scholarship to Juilliard and heard her first opera (
Salome
at the Met), that she knew she had found her true calling.

She was cast as Mistress Ford in a Juilliard production of
Falstaff
, and then taken off the billing. Because it was not deemed appropriate for a black singer to perform the role, only the personal intervention of Juilliard’s president (the renowned composer William Schuman) caused the Opera Theatre staff to reverse the decision. Price went on as originally scheduled, and her rise to fame began with that opening night performance.

In the audience was another famous composer, Virgil Thomson, who promptly invited the young singer to appear in the 1952 revival of his own opera
Four Saints in Three Acts
. A year later, Price’s shining voice and dramatic acting abilities came together when she starred as Bess in a production of Gershwin’s
Porgy and Bess
that toured Europe and the United States for two years.

In November 1954, she gave a brilliant debut recital at New York’s Town Hall. A month later, she broke another color barrier appearing as Tosca in a television production of the Puccini favorite, and when she sang
Aida
at La Scala, she again made history as the first black woman ever to appear at that famous opera house in Milan.

“My career was simultaneous with the opening up of civil rights,” the soprano told author Stephen Lubin in 1973. “Whenever there was any copy about me, what I was as an artist, what I had as ability, got shoveled under because all the attention was on racial connotations.” The burden of that responsibility was enormous, and it took its emotional toll (“I didn’t even have time to lose my temper,” she said), but Miss Price was and is a survivor. “As a token black, I paid my dues. It’s kind of wonderful to be able to concentrate on being a plain singer, without the overwhelming weight of the monkey on your back.”

As a singer, though hardly plain, Leontyne Price surmounted all those pressures to become a star, then a superstar, and finally a genuine American legend. Her Met debut in 1961 was greeted by a precedent-breaking 42-minute ovation, and she went on to sing Tosca, Manon, Butterfly, and many other important roles, including Cleopatra when the new Metropolitan Opera House opened at Lincoln Center with the world premiere of Samuel Barber’s
Antony and Cleopatra
.

Her radiant voice and impressive stage presence seemed especially apt for Aida, the proud Ethiopian princess, which was her signature role. It was the opera of her San Francisco debut in 1957, and of the performances at the Vienna State Opera (under Herbert von Karajan) that solidified her European career. Not surprisingly, it was also as Aida that Leontyne Price said her operatic farewell, an unforgettable performance telecast live from the Met stage on January 3, 1985. Later that year, President Reagan presented the soprano with the National Medal of Arts.

America’s prima donna assoluta has received many other awards, citations, medals, and honorary doctorates, and better still, she continues to delight listeners with her—alas—ever more infrequent recitals. As Lyndon Johnson said in 1965 when he bestowed upon Leontyne Price the Presidential Medal of Freedom, “her singing has brought light to her land.”

Is there anything this supremely gifted, enormously popular mezzo has not performed? Marilyn Horne has sung American theatre songs, Russian lullabies, Italian operas, German art songs, and French Christmas carols. She dubbed the voice part for Dorothy Dandridge in the classic film version of
Carmen Jones
, recorded American hymns with Tennessee Ernie Ford, sang TV duets with Jim Nabors and Carol Burnett, then popped up singing solo arias on a couple of
Odd Couple
episodes. Back at the opera, she shared memorable performances with three of the other “Living Legends” discussed in this chapter, Leontyne Price, Joan Sutherland, and Luciano Pavarotti.

Born in Bradford, Pennsylvania, Marilyn Horne (1929–) (nicknamed “Jackie” by her brother, who had planned on having a male sibling) started studying under the guidance of her father, an amateur tenor who sensed future greatness in his daughter and insisted she live up to that potential. “As a kid I sometimes wanted to play, go to the movies, baseball games, anything rather than practice,” she recalled in her autobiography, “but my singing came first, and I learned early how to sacrifice.”

 
Important Things to Know
Check your collection; if you have that Horne/Ford album, it’s now a collector’s item fetching an impressive price.

First there were the Three Kings, then we thrilled to the escapades of the Three Musketeers and howled at the antics of the Three Stooges, but surely there has never been a marketing coup to compare with the conversion of three opera singers into pop superstars. They are capable of filling sports arenas and earning higher fees in an evening than most toilers in the operatic vineyards will amass in a decade.

Granted that Jose Carreras, Placido Domingo, and Luciano Pavarotti have gorgeous voices, remarkable virtuosity and genial stage presences, but their parlaying of high Cs into C-notes has been unparalleled in our time. It has also had the distinctive advantage of introducing opera to enormous numbers of people who, before the Three Tenors mania, would not have touched Verdi or Puccini with the proverbial ten-foot pole. We were talking about feuds and fusses a while ago; for years, rumor had it that Domingo and Pavarotti were constantly jockeying for position in the operatic world, each having less than the highest regard for the other. This, it turned out, was another bit of press-agentry, with as much real substance as the fabled radio feud of Jack Benny and Fred Allen. Just as both comedians had their own extraordinary gifts and were offstage friends, each tenor has carved out his own slice of operatic greatness, and if alleged jealousies could sell more tickets, so be it. Their appearance on the same stage certainly must have sold a ticket or two to listeners hoping to see some on-stage bloodletting, especially with a third “rival” tenor there into the bargain. Instead they found three musical teddy-bears, all sweetness, light, and mutual admiration. That, in company with splendid singing, proved to be a pretty heady brew.

The first Three Tenors concert was held in 1990, on the occasion of the World Cup Championship in Rome. On a starlit night, with the full moon rising and Zubin Mehta conducting an orchestra of 200, some 6,000 people crowded into the outdoor arena known as the Baths of Caracalla for what was modestly billed as “the biggest single musical event in history.” Four years later, that figure paled into insignificance when the Messrs. Carreras, Domingo, Pavarotti, and Mehta joined forces again in Los Angeles Dodgers Stadium, this time with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the L.A. Music Center Chorus filling out the roster. Forget the paltry thousands who filled the stadium: The concert was watched by 1.3 billion viewers worldwide and sold 10 million CDs and videos. In 1996, the Three Tenors launched a worldwide tour, with over 600,000 people in concert attendance and millions more in the TV audience.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
Hoping to hop on the entertainment bandwagon, a trio of young American singers has been touring as the Three Sopranos, and there are even a couple of CDs out by the Three Counter-Tenors. Not to worry. The unique alchemy of Jose, Placido, and Luciano is not likely to be duplicated any time soon.

As a small boy in Barcelona (1946–), Jose Carreras dreamed of becoming a soccer player, but he also enjoyed spending time at the movies, where one day he saw
The Great Caruso
. Like Mozart, the prodigy who could reproduce anything at the keyboard after a single hearing, the young Carreras found he could imitate Mario Lanza imitating Caruso with uncanny accuracy. His parents had no special musical aspirations for their son, but they were impressed, and enrolled the eight-year-old lad at the Barcelona Conservatory, and also took him to his first opera, a performance of Verdi’s
Aida
at the Teatro del Liceo. Three years later, Jose was back in that theatre, on stage as the boy in Manuel de Falla’s
Le Retablo de Maese Pedro
(Master Peter’s Puppet Show).

The Barcelona air must be good for the voice, for the city gave birth to a pair of the most beloved sopranos of modern times, Victoria de los Angeles and Montserrat Caballe, and it was the latter artist who heard the young Carreras, encouraged him in his studies, and chose him to play the tenor lead opposite her in Donizetti’s
Lucrezia Borgia
. Thereafter she frequently requested Carreras as her leading man, their continuing friendship both an inspiration to the young tenor and an important spur to his international career. He came to London in 1971 for a concert performance of Donizetti’s
Maria Stuarda
with Caballe, then won the Verdi Voice Competition in Parma, leading to his opening the 1972 season in that city with
La Boheme
. Another Puccini favorite,
Madame Butterfly
was his American debut role; Carreras was soon a regular at New York City Opera, and soon thereafter at the Met.

La Scala invited Carreras to debut there in 1975, and the tenor’s fame took another leap forward when Herbert von Karajan chose him for the Verdi
Requiem
at the 1976 Salzburg Festival. “Maestro Karajan was like a father to me,” Carreras says, recalling later performances of Bizet’s
Carmen
and Verdi’s
Don Carlos
with the renowned conductor.

Everything seemed to be progressing in the best possible way when suddenly the picture darkened. Carreras fell ill on the set of a film version of
La Boheme
, and the music world was stunned to hear that he had been diagnosed with leukemia. Boundless willpower and medical magic combined to beat the affliction, and when Carreras sang a program of Catalan and Italian folk songs in Barcelona on July 21, 1988 a cheering audience of 150,000, including the Queen of Spain, welcomed him back with an enveloping display of love for his artistry and admiration for his courage.

Four years later, Carreras was back in Barcelona, serving as musical director of the opening and closing ceremonies of the summer Olympics, and he has continued to sing all over the world raising funds for leukemia research, even establishing the Jose Carreras International Leukemia Foundation to fight the disease. “You have to fight,” he said, “and fight by drawing on all your inner resources. You’ll be surprised how great they are.”