James A. Drake: After the War: Six
American Tenors of the 1920's
I am both honored and pleased
to be able to once again present Dr. James A. Drake as our guest author
today. A recently retired college president, James A. Drake is a
distinguished author of seven books, four of which are biographies of great
opera singers of the twentieth century. Although not a musician (he
earned a doctorate in philosophy and taught primarily in social-science
disciplines before he became a university administrator), Dr. Drake earned the
confidence of the legendary soprano Rosa Ponselle, with whom he collaborated on
her autobiography for Doubleday and Company. With a foreword by Luciano
Pavarotti, the Ponselle-Drake collaboration yielded excellent reviews and was
named "Music Book of the Month" by the National Book Clubs of America
in 1982. The book was also promoted during a Metropolitan Opera broadcast
in the 1982-83 season. By that time, Dr. Drake had been selected by Sara Tucker,
widow of the celebrated tenor Richard Tucker, to write an authorized biography
of the great singer, who had died in 1975 while at the peak of his career.
For the Tucker book, Luciano Pavarotti again contributed a foreword, and
the biography was officially released at a special event hosted by maestro
James Levine at Lincoln Center. Once again, Dr. Drake's newest work
received a "Music Book of the Month" award.
As the United States settled into a period of tranquility and prosperity after World War One, a new phenomenon emerged in the nation's major opera houses: the rise of American-born, American-trained singers who were engaged to perform leading roles without any significant experience in the operatic capitals of Europe. This new phenomenon had been predicted by Giulio Gatti-Casazza, who was then the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera Company.
"Before the war," Gatti-Casazza told a New York Times interviewer in April 1918, "all aspiring young artists and students went to Europe ... But that is finished now, for a long time [and] I doubt if such a state of things will ever return." Acting on his prediction, Gatti-Casazza soon made an overnight star of Connecticut-born Rosa Ponselle, whose only experience had been in vaudeville, whom he cast with Enrico Caruso in the 1918 Metropolitan premiere of Verdi's La Forza del Destino.
From November 1908, when Gatti-Casazza began his tenure as the Metropolitan's general manager, and until his retirement at the end of the 1935-36 opera season, his administration engaged steadily increasing numbers of American-born singers, and featured them in both major and minor roles. This was a far cry from the 1890s, when the Pennsylvania-born baritone, David Bispham, was described by the New York Times as "the only American man singing upon the stage in either continent in grand opera." The rise of the American-born opera singer coincided with the refinement of the phonograph and the growth of the sound-recording industry. In turn, the recording industry owed a good portion of its initial commercial success to an opera singer--Enrico Caruso, the superstar tenor whom Giulio Gatti-Casazza had the good fortune to inherit from his predecessor at the Metropolitan Opera House. If the long shadow of Caruso eclipsed the careers of any American-born tenors of the World War One era, the phonograph captured their singing--and from their recordings, some of which were made 100 years ago, we can experience and appreciate the uniqueness of their voices and their mastery of vocal technique.
Riccardo Martin
By 1901, Martin had gained a sufficient
reputation as a concert singer to persuade Henry Flagler, the railroad magnate,
to award him a grant to study with prestigious voice teachers in Paris,
Florence, and Naples. In Paris, his principal teacher was Jean De Reszke,
the tenor luminary of the late nineteenth century. In Naples, Martin
studied and coached with Vincenzo Lombardi, who had figured prominently in
Caruso's early career. On November 20, 1907, Martin made
what should have been an acclaimed debut at the Metropolitan Opera House,
singing the role of Faust in Boito's Mefistofele. The timing
of his debut, however, could not have been more unfortunate for Martin:
the title role inMefistofele was sung by the incomparable
Russian basso, Feodor Chaliapin, who was also making his Metropolitan debut
that evening.
Although Martin received generally
good reviews in the major New York newspapers the next day, it
was Chaliapin's stunning performance that led the New York Times critic
to write, "One was reminded of Caruso nights, so boisterous were the
demonstrations of approval ...." For the remainder of the 1907-08
season, however--and for the duration of Martin's singing career, which
ended when he decided to return to the study of composition in the early
1930s--his "pure and vibrant tenor" (as it was described by one
critic) was increasingly appreciated by audiences, critics, and buyers of his
Victor phonograph records. This is Riccardo Martin's recording
of the majestic "O souverain, o juge, o pere" from Massenet's Le
Cid, which he made for the Victor Company's prestigious Red Seal
label on December 8, 1910:
Paul Althouse
Like Riccardo Martin, Pennsylvania-born Paul Althouse (1889-1954) studied music and voice in college, at Bucknell University. With the encouragement of Bucknell faculty members and alumni supporters, Althouse went to New York in the early 1910s to study privately with a number of prominent voice teachers including Percy Rector Stevens and Oscar Saenger. When he was offered a Metropolitan Opera contract by Giulio Gatti-Casazza in 1912, Althouse became the first American-born, American-trained singer to debut at the Metropolitan with no previous European experience. Although the leading tenor roles eluded him (his Met debut was as one of the guards in Die Zauberflote, with Leo Slezak as Tamino and Emmy Destinn as Pamina), Althouse earned the confidence of the Metropolitan management as he undertook more secondary roles from the 1912-13 season onward.
Like Riccardo Martin, Pennsylvania-born Paul Althouse (1889-1954) studied music and voice in college, at Bucknell University. With the encouragement of Bucknell faculty members and alumni supporters, Althouse went to New York in the early 1910s to study privately with a number of prominent voice teachers including Percy Rector Stevens and Oscar Saenger. When he was offered a Metropolitan Opera contract by Giulio Gatti-Casazza in 1912, Althouse became the first American-born, American-trained singer to debut at the Metropolitan with no previous European experience. Although the leading tenor roles eluded him (his Met debut was as one of the guards in Die Zauberflote, with Leo Slezak as Tamino and Emmy Destinn as Pamina), Althouse earned the confidence of the Metropolitan management as he undertook more secondary roles from the 1912-13 season onward.
During that season, Althouse was
cast as Grigory in the American premiere of Boris Godunov on
March 19, 1913, with Toscanini conducting and Adamo Didur singing the title
role. After one of Althouse's performances in Boris,
the New York Times critic Richard Aldrich described him as
"a young American tenor who ... has a voice of unusual beauty of quality
and a style of vocalism that brings it forth to the greatest advantage."
Early in his career, Althouse's
voice was a sizable lyric tenor, with lirico-spinto potential.
From 1920-1925, after being unable to secure any leading operatic roles,
he limited his singing to recitals and concerts exclusively. But the
summer of 1925, Althouse had a transformational experience: he traveled
to Bayreuth, an experience which prompted him to re-direct his career and
pursue the Wagnerian heldentenor roles.
Althouse's first performance at the
Metropolitan as a Wagnerian tenor took place on February 3, 1934, when he appeared
as Siegmund in Die Walkure, with Frida Leider as Brunnhilde.
He remained on the Metropolitan roster until the 1939-1940 season,
after which he concertized sporadically and then decided to became a full-time
voice teacher. Although a number of Althouse's
students went on to have successful careers in opera, concerts, and on radio,
it was Brooklyn-born Richard Tucker who became Althouse's star pupil.
(Eleanor Steber, who also studied with Althouse for a time, was always
quick to point out that unlike Tucker, she had previously studied with another
teacher.) One of Althouse's last lessons with the young Tucker took place
a mere two weeks before Althouse passed away on February 5, 1954.
During his pre-Wagnerian career at
the Metropolitan, Althouse made a number of recordings for the Victor,
Columbia, and Edison companies. This is one of his memorable Victor
records: the finale of the Garden Scene from Boris, which
Althouse recorded with the contralto Margarete Ober on April 23, 1915:
Orville Harrold
"From Plow-Boy to
Parsifal" was how The Etude, a classical-music magazine
of the World War One era, described the career of the American
tenor Orville Harrold (1877-1933). Born on a farm near Muncie,
Indiana, Harrold sang in local and regional choruses while studying with a
series of teachers. The last of these local teachers was Alexander
Ernestinoff, whose confidence in the young tenor's future led him to serve as
Harrold's de facto agent and promoter. A tall, muscular, large-framed man
(critic Max de Schauensee once likened Harrold's concert-stage presence to
"Paul Bunyan in a tuxedo"), Harrold began his career on Broadway,
where he sang operettas from 1906-1910. His light-opera career reached
its zenith when the composer Victor Herbert chose Harrold to create the role of
Captain Dick Warrington in the world premiere of Naughty Marietta in November
1910.
Gifted with a sizable voice, ringing
high notes, and a seemingly limitless upper range, Harrold experienced a vocal
crisis after his success in Naughty Marietta. On the advice
of fellow tenor Paul Althouse, Harrold sought the help of Oscar Saenger to
rebuild his voice and technique, which had been over-strained as a result of
his frequent appearances on Broadway and in vaudeville. Under Saenger's tutelage, Harrold
not only rebuilt his voice but also made the transition from singing light
opera to grand opera. The Italian verismo roles proved
to be an ideal fit for Harrold's voice, and in the Puccini-Leoncavallo-Mascagni
repertoire he received some of his finest reviews. After one of his
performances in Pagliacci with the Hammerstein Opera,
the New York Times reviewer wrote, “His success was marked at the
end of the first act, when he was recalled until he repeated ‘Vesti la giubba.’
... His voice is one of beauty, his high tones having especially good quality.”
In Cavalleria Rusticana, which
Harrold sang at the Metropolitan Opera for the first time on January 20, 1920,
his performance as Turiddu was lauded by the New York Timescritic
Richard Aldrich, who wrote that "his singing was remarkably fine in its
power and pathos, in the beauty of his tone and the dramatic expression he
brought to the role." At the Metropolitan, Harrold sang in
the American premiere of Korngold's Die tote Stadt (with Maria
Jeritza), in Charpentier's Louise (with Geraldine Farrar), and
in Rimsky-Korsakov's The Snow Maiden. But despite his
success in opera, Harrold returned to Broadway and continued to tour in
vaudeville until 1929, when he retired from the stage.
On April 16, 1920, prompted by the
acclaim he had received as Rodolfo in La Boheme at the Metropolitan
Opera, Harrold traveled to the Victor studios in Camden, New Jersey, to record
Rodolfo's narrative, "Che gelida manina":
Mario Chamlee
A native of Los Angeles, Mario
Chamlee (1892-1966) was offered a recording contract by the
Brunswick company when he was mustered out of the U.S. Army in 1919. At
the time, Brunswick's management was creating a recording division as a
complement to the company's line of high-priced phonographs. The
recording executive who essentially discovered Chamlee was Gustave Haenschen,
also a war veteran, who had been discharged from the Navy just prior to
becoming Brunswick's director of popular-music recordings. "Archer Cholmondeley, which was
Mario's real name," Haenschen recalled in a 1973 interview, "was
still in his khakis when we persuaded him to make a test recording for us at
Brunswick. We signed him to an exclusive recording contract, and he
stayed with us for the rest of his singing career."
Before the war, Chamlee had
graduated from the University of Southern California, and had also studied
violin during his college years. While still at USC, he began studying
voice with local teachers and decided to pursue an operatic career.
Adopting the stage name "Mario Rodolfi," he made his debut with
the Lombardi Opera Company in Los Angeles in 1916, singing the role of Edgardo
in Lucia di Lammermoor. "What a virile yet sensitive
singer-actor Mr. Rodolfi is at his young age," one Los Angeles critic
wrote of his performance. "His is a trumpet of a voice when called
for, but was tender and emotional in the Tomb Scene."
At Brunswick, Haenschen and Walter
B. Rogers, who directed the company's classical-music division, persuaded the
young tenor to adopt the name "Archer Chamlee" for record-making
purposes. The sales of the newly-named tenor's first Brunswick recordings
made it clear that Chamlee had the potential for a substantial recording career.
"What made his voice appealing
to our record buyers," Haenschen said, "was the uncanny similarity of
timbre phrasing, and interpretation between Chamlee's recordings for Brunswick
and Caruso's recordings for the Victor Company." This was no mere
coincidence, as Haenschen freely admitted. "Our opera recording
director, Walter Rogers, had worked for the Victor Company before he came to
Brunswick, and he had conducted most of Caruso's recording sessions at Victor.
So when we signed a recording contract with Chamlee, Walter worked with
him to mimic Caruso's phrasing, note by note. "After two or three weeks of
making test recordings under Walter's direction," Haenschen added,
"Chamlee began to sound enough like Caruso, at least on records, to the
point that we thought we had finally found a way to compete with the Victor
Company and its star tenor."
In November 1920, after finally
settling on the stage name "Mario Chamlee," the young tenor made his
Metropolitan Opera debut in Tosca with Geraldine Farrar in the
title role, and Antonio Scotti as Scarpia. Perhaps because of such
illustrious onstage company, Chamlee received only passing notice in the
critics' columns. Reviews of the tenor's subsequent
performances in a variety of Italian and French leading roles yielded generally
lukewarm responses from the major New York critics. Chamlee's Duke
in Rigoletto, which he sang to Amelita Galli-Curci's
Gilda in November 1931, was judged to have "suffered, vocally, from
driving the voice unnecessarily in his upper tones." When he first
appeared in Gounod's Faust, however, he received more favorable
treatment from the critics: "Mr. Chamlee had sung Faust only once
before and never at the Metropolitan," said the New York Times reviewer.
"Making allowances for a few slips in his cues, it was vocally very
fine, and after the 'Salut demeure' especially, he was the recipient of
well-deserved applause."
One of Chamlee's last significant operatic appearances took place on March 3, 1938, when Gian Carlo Menotti's Amelia Goes to the Ball had its Metropolitan Opera premiere. Although the opera itself received tepid reviews (the New York World-Telegram likened Menotti's score to "lukewarm vanilla soda"), Chamlee received commendable reviews overall. By the early 1930s, when the recording industry was reeling from the effects of the Depression, the Brunswick company had been sold to the Warner Brothers studios in Hollywood. The sale of the company coincided with Chamlee's declining royalties from his recordings, as well as his decreasing interest in an operatic career. By 1939, he had ceased singing opera at all, and limited his radio performances to popular music exclusively.
Later, with his wife, the lyric soprano Ruth Miller, Chamlee became a full-time voice teacher. (Anna Maria Alberghetti, of Broadway fame, studied with the Chamlees for a time.) During the prime of his career, however Mario Chamlee had been a formidable tenor. This is his 1924 Brunswick recording of Caruso's signature aria, "Vesti la giubba":
Charles Hackett
Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, Charles Hackett (1889-1942) began his operatic career in Boston’s Jordan Hall, where he appeared in Gounod's Faust in 1910. Reviewing one of the young tenor's early appearances in Rossini's Stabat Mater, the critic for the Musical Courier wrote, “He proved a revelation to the public who had never heard him before. Not having much opportunity to show what he really could do except in the ‘Cujus animam’..., he availed himself so excellently of this one solo, even to the extent of ... a daring D-flat, [that] was immediately rewarded by the sort of applause which at once spells success.”
After Hackett's Metropolitan Opera
debut, as Almaviva in Il Barbiere di Siviglia on January 31,
1919, the New York Times reviewer said, "he disclosed
such an agreeable and flexible voice and such finished singing and acting that
the audience could not help recognize that a real bel canto artist was before
them ...." As the 1918-19 Metropolitan season
progressed, Hackett received continuous praise from the major newspaper
critics. Of a Verdi Requiem that he sang with Rosa
Ponselle, Margarete Matzenauer, and Jose Mardones, the critic Sylvester
Rawlings wrote that "Charles Hackett ... surprised even his warmest
admirers by the ease and distinction and beauty with which he sang the none too
easy music that fell to his lot." Hackett also earned the enthusiastic
regard of Enrico Caruso. “The night Caruso arrived at Buenos Aires,"
Hackett recalled in a newspaper interview, "he happened to hear me sing
for the first time. He had not been there for fifteen years, and was
surrounded with influential friends. Yet as I was going on in the second
act he broke through the crowd, and with that generosity and great-heartedness
which made him so loved, put his arm around my shoulders and said, ‘How you
have sung tonight! You make me feel old, for you have done things with
your voice which remind me of what I used to do when I was younger'.”
Hackett's last in-house performance
at the Metropolitan Opera took place in April 1921, after which he decided to
leave the Met and to relocate to Italy for additional musical study. When
he returned to the U.S. a year later, he joined the Lyric Opera of Chicago,
where he sang the leading tenor roles in the Italian and French repertoire from
1923 until 1933. On February 3, 1934, Hackett
returned to the Metropolitan Opera to sing Romeo to the Juliette of Lucrezia
Bori, one of his favorite colleagues. The morning after the performance,
one critic wrote that "Mr. Hackett ... sang the difficult role so
beautifully as to command the admiration and respect of music lover and musician
alike. His voice is one of great appeal, his phrasing sensitive, his
appreciation of the subtleties of the French language that of a true artist
...." This is Charles Hackett's 1927 recording of "La
reve" from Massenet's Manon:
Roland Hayes
The challenges faced by Riccardo
Martin, Paul Althouse, Orville Harrold, Mario Chamlee and Charles Hackett were
trebled, at the least, in the case of Roland Hayes(1887-1987), the first
African-American tenor to make a debut on the concert platform as an aspiring
opera singer. In common with the other
American-born tenors of the World War One era, Hayes was inspired by the
recordings of Caruso. "I had never heard any real music," Hayes
later wrote in his autobiography, "but one day a pianist came to our
church in Chattanooga, and ... he took me in hand and introduced me to
phonograph records by Caruso. That opened the heavens for me. The
beauty of what could be done with the voice just overwhelmed me."
The son of freed slaves who became
tenant farmers, Hayes was born in Curryville, Georgia, but relocated with his
mother and his family to Chattanooga in 1898, after his father had died earlier
that year. Although he was able to attend school sporadically in the
segregated, under-funded black schools in the Chattanooga area, Hayes was
forced to leave school in order to help support his mother and his siblings.
By his own estimation, he had a sixth-grade education when he began
working as a waiter and earning other small sums from any jobs he could find.
By the late-1890's, Hayes had
matured into a lyric tenor under the tutelage of Arthur Calhoun, the director
of a local church choir. In 1905, Hayes was still supporting himself as a
waiter and hotel porter when he was accepted into the college-preparatory
program at Fisk University in Nashville. There, a group of tutors helped
him obtain a high-school diploma. Decades later, Fisk University would
award him an honorary doctoral degree, one of eight that he received during his
long lifetime.
While enrolled at Fisk, Hayes was
accepted into the elite Jubilee Singers, which traveled throughout the northern
U.S. and much of Europe as a fundraising vehicle for the University. From
1909-1911, a quartet from the Jubilee Singers (which originally consisted of
ten male singers) was recorded and marketed by the Victor Company.
Although Hayes was not a member of the Jubilee Quartet at that time (Victor
catalogs and advertisements of the era list the names and a photograph of the
four members), he was in the group when they made a second series of recordings
for the Edison Company in 1911. After leaving Fisk, Hayes relocated
to Louisville, Kentucky, but kept in contact with the Fisk University
administration. When the lead tenor of the Jubilee Singers left the
ensemble in 1914, the president of Fisk contacted Hayes in Louisville and
offered him the lead-tenor role in the Jubilee Quartet's upcoming concert in
Boston.
Hayes not only accepted the offer,
but also decided to remain in Boston in the hope of establishing himself as a
solo artist. In 1915, he made his concert debut at Jordan Hall in Boston
(where Charles Hackett had made his operatic debut five years earlier).
"His voice is rich, pure, and gracefully lyric," wrote Philip
Hale in the Boston Globe. "Not only has he a voice that
many might envy, he also has the gift of interpretation. He catches
almost instinctively the mood of the poet and composer." Another pioneering black artist,
Harry T. Burleigh (1866-1949), a conservatory-trained baritone, pianist, and
composer-arranger, served as Hayes's piano accompanist when the young
tenor made his New York City debut in Aeolian Hall on January 30, 1919. (Five
years later, Aeolian Hall would become the site of the premiere of George
Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.) The day after Hayes's concert,
the critic for the New York Times wrote, "the young
man's enunciation was remarkable, not least so in the dream from Massenet's
'Manon,' which he sang in good French."
Because phonograph recordings had
been a key to the artistic and financial success of the Jubilee Singers, Hayes
decided to pursue a recording career as a supplement to his concert
appearances. First at Victor, and subsequently at the Columbia and Edison
studios, he made test recordings but was unable to secure a contract from any
of the three major record companies. Left with no alternative but to
finance his own recordings, he managed to raise enough money to pay the
Columbia Company to produce a limited quantity of phonograph records of his
singing. In the February 1919 issue of The
Crisis, the monthly magazine of the NAACP, the enterprising young tenor
raised enough money to pay for a half-page advertisement entitled "Roland
W. Hayes Phonograph Records." The advertisement began with a
question: "Do you own a phonograph of any make and have you tried to
purchase records which would bring to your home the singing and playing of the
best Negro artists?"
Noting that most record stores
usually stocked "popular music and possibly a few records of quartet songs
by Negro singers," the advertisement suggested that prospective buyers
should be able instead to purchase recordings by "the individual Negro performer
who would rank high among the invisible makers of music ... to cheer your spare
moments after the grind of the day's work is done." "At last this is
possible," the advertisement stated. "Roland W. Hayes, the
acknowledged leading singer of the Negro race, has brought out his first record
and ... has plans for many others in the very near future." Four
records were listed in the advertisement, three of which were spirituals.
The fourth recording was an operatic selection identified on the record label
as "Arioso from 'Pagliacci'." This is Roland Hayes's
performance of "Vesti la giubba":
Long after Riccardo Martin, Paul
Althouse, Orville Harrold, Mario Chamlee and Charles Hackett had retired from
the stage, the indefatigable Roland Hayes was still concertizing.
Throughout the 1950's and 1960's, he sang nearly eighty concerts per
year. Although an operatic career had eluded him, he continued to give
concerts until 1973, when he was in his mid-eighties.
James A. Drake
James A. Drake