The Great American Tenor Richard Crooks
Born: June 26, 1900 - Trenton, New Jersey, USA
Died: September 29, 1972 - Potola Valley, California, USA
Richard (Alexander) Crooks, studied with Sidney H. Bourne and Frank LaForge in New York. Richard Crooks first visited Loon Bay, the lake expansion of the Saint Croix River, in 1923. Crooks was a guest of the musical accompanist and arranger Frank La Forge. La Forge had built a studio on his father-in-law's 2700-acre summer estate, and operatic proteges such as Lily Pons and Gladys Swarthout not only honed their talents but also enjoyed camping forays along the river. The grassy knoll overlooking Loon Bay was a favorite camping spot.
After several busy concert seasons as an oratorio and song recital specialist, including participation in the American premiere of Gustav Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde, Richard Crooks traveled to Germany where he made his operatic début in Hamburg as Cavaradossi in 1927. His career took him to the Berlin State Opera, Belgium, and Sweden.
Following appearances in Berlin and other European centers, Richard Crooks returned to the USA, making his American debut in 1930 in Philadelphia as Cavardossi. In February 1933 he made his Metropolitan début in New York as Massenet' s Des Grieux and remained with the company for the next ten years as well as singing in other houses.
Although limited in the upper register, Richard Crooks possessed a voice of uncommon sweetness mixed with virility, and he learned to produce the top notes as cleverly mixed head tones. Max de Schauensee remarked that Crooks was "admired for [his] consistently high standard of tone and [vocal] production. He was a sound musician but an indifferent actor." On this latter point, Peter Davis remarked in The American Opera Singer that "from his photographs at least, Crooks always gave the impression of a friendly insurance salesman. But the voice was by far the most attractive among the American tenors of his generation."
Here is the lovely "Songs my Mother taught me"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpII60yELmg
Here is Richard Crooks' most famous recording, "The Holy City"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM9i_I_kq_A
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Thursday, September 11, 2014
Dan Beddoe, The Great Welsh Tenor
The Welsh operatic tenor, Dan Beddoe, was born in Aberdare, Wales, UK on March 16th 1863. He died in December 1937 at the age of 74.
A Cincinnati Enquirer review of a May 1931 performance stated that he "stole the show with voice clear and ringing" with "countless" calls for encores and "with the entire audience of many thousands rising en masse to pay him special tribute."
A December 1931 New York Evening Post article, recalling his singing in the Messiah and the Elijah for the Oratorio Society of New York, noted that he had "been singing for a generation" since his first appearance there in 1903 and described how he was "in marvelous voice and received a standing ovation after each aria he sang.
A New York Times review of the same performance noted that "For Dan Beddoe it was the fortieth year of public appearance. He has become almost indispensable to the Society's performances of the Messiah. The 64-year-old tenor sang as always in keeping with the spirit of the work and with fine musicianship. Age does not stale the many resources of his art."
Here is the great Welsh tenor singing "O Danny Boy:"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3otalrk8Ig
And here is "A Moonlight Song:"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06OJQ_eJTyY
Sunday, August 31, 2014
The Mighty Voice of Kurt Baum
Kurt Baum has always held a special place in my heart,
because he was the first great opera singer I heard. I was 17 years old, which has been a very
long time ago. I was listening to the radio one Saturday afternoon, when the
Texaco Opera Theater came on. It was the first opera I had ever
heard. It was Aida, and Rhadames was
being sung by none other than the great Kurt Baum. I simply could not believe what I was
hearing. I didn’t know such voices
existed. I knew” Celeste Aida” from
having played it on the piano, but hearing Baum sing the phrase“un trono,
vicino al sol “ as he brought the great aria
to its thundering ending was a totally new experience for a 17 year old
with no experience at all in opera. I
never looked back. It’s still one of my
favorite arias. This might be a good
place to start:
Not the most beautiful voice in opera, but one of the
mightiest in the business!
Baum was born in Prague in 1908, and became famous for his
25 seasons at the Met as a superb House
Tenor who was always available, always good and always popular with with the
Met audience. His huge repertoire
included Aida, Rosenkavalier, Trovatore, Lohengrin, Pagliacci, Carmen,Tosca /
Turridu, Samson, and many, many others, including William Tell. Here is the stunning “O Muto Asil:”
What an extraordinary voice!
He always sang at full blast and always drew great attention to
himself. There were very few voices like
it!
Thursday, August 21, 2014
Mado Robin
Madeleine Marie
Robin, generally
known as Mado Robin, was a French coloratura soprano,noted
for her extreme upper range. She is
commonly considered to have had one of the highest female voicesof all time, similar
in many ways to that of Yma Sumac. Robin
was born in Yzeures-sur-Creuse, Touraine.While some considered her to have been a singer in the general category
of the vaudeville singers of earlier days, she was in fact an extraordinary
singer and considered a serious vocal artist in France, where she was,
generally speaking, treated with respect and greatly appreciated. She appeared
widely in concert, and on Radio and TV. I think one famous recording tells the
tale. Here is perhaps the most
extraordinary of all recordings of “Spargi d’amaro pianto:”
At age 17, she
married Alan Smith, an Englishman, who died shortly after World War II in a car
crash. She had one daughter.
Robin died in
Paris in 1960 from cancer (some sources state liver cancer, others leukaemia) a few days before the 1500th
performance of Lakmé at the Opéra-Comique, which had organized the event for
her birthday.
A museum to her
life opened in her home town in 2009.
Dear reader: If you wish to make a comment on this blog, please feel free to contact me at:
Edmund StAustell@ gmail.com Your comments are always welcome. Edmund
Dear reader: If you wish to make a comment on this blog, please feel free to contact me at:
Edmund StAustell@ gmail.com Your comments are always welcome. Edmund
Sunday, August 10, 2014
Martha Angelici
Martha Angelici (May 22, 1907 – September 11, 1973), was a French operatic soprano of Corsican origin, particularly associated with the French lyric repertoire.
Angelici was born in Cargese. While still very young she moved with her family to Belgium, where she studied voice in Brussels with Alfred Mahy. She began singing for the Belgian, Dutch and Luxemburg radio in 1933, and gave her first public concert at the Kurzaal of Ostend in 1934. Her first stage performance was in Marseille, as Mimi in La bohème, in 1936.
She made her debut at the Opéra-Comique in 1938, where she had a long and successful career, and made her debut at the Palais Garnier in 1953, as Micaela in Carmen, other notable roles included Leila, Pamina, Nedda, etc. She made a few guest appearances at the Monte Carlo Opera and La Monnaie in Brussels. She was also much admired in French baroque music notably in Rameau's Les Indes galantes, and was much loved as a concert singer, especially of Corsican songs.
She was married to the director of the Opéra-Comique, François Agostini. She died in Ajaccio, aged 66.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDxHzNqW5VQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eq3LKfJgMk
Friday, August 1, 2014
Robert Weede, by James A. Drake
ROBERT
WEEDE
"This
place is worse than Hell," a frustrated Mario Lanza wrote to his
manager from the steaming-hot Army Air Force base in Marfa , Texas
The
young Mario Lanza was not alone in seeking out Robert Weede for help with vocal
technique. "Bob was our 'voice repairman,'" said Jan Peerce of
Weede's uncanny ability to pinpoint, analyze and, as Peerce put it, to
"repair" other singers' vocal problems. Other first-rank
singers including Norman Treigle, Dominic Cossa, and John Alexander also sought
Weede's help and advice at key points in their careers. At no time would
Weede accept any remuneration for assisting his colleagues when they were
experiencing vocal problems.
Jan
Peerce had sought Weede’s help during the only vocal crisis that the
otherwise-durable tenor ever experienced.
Weede helped Peerce regain his voice, and appeared with him in San
Francisco on The Standard Hour radio
series, where they sang the duet “Le minaccie i fieri accenti” from La Forza del Destino:
[Dear Readers: address links are not working properly. The simplest thing to do is just check out the videos on Google Youtube by the name of the video, such as " le minacci, Forza, Weede, Peerce. " That usually works well. Sorry for the hassle--been having a lot of trouble with Google lately, surprise, surprise!"]
http://youtu.be/6ESSpgn7ubM
http://youtu.be/6ESSpgn7ubM
Weede
also appeared on radio with Peerce’s young brother-in-law, Richard Tucker, on The Squibb Hour, where Tucker had become
a frequent guest artist after being signed by the National Concert Artists
Corporation, an agency which secured radio appearances for both up-and-coming
and well-established classical musicians.
On
The Squibb Hour, accompanied by Lynn
Murray and his orchestra, the young Tucker and the already-established Weede
sang “Within the Temple There,” an English version of “Au fond du temple
saint,” the tenor-baritone duet from I Pescatori
di Perle:
Although
Tucker had not yet made his Metropolitan Opera debut when he appeared on The
Squibb Hour, Weede was first-rank baritone by then. Born Robert Wiedefeld in Baltimore ,
Maryland , on February 22, 1903, he studied
voice at the Eastman School of Music in the mid-1920's, and subsequently went
to Milan U.S.
Weede
made his Met debut on May 15, 1937, as Tonio in a double-bill performance of Pagliacci and Cavalleria Rusticana.
Not until the rehearsals were in progress did he realize that another
promising young American baritone, Thomas L. Thomas, had been scheduled for his
debut the same day, as Alfio in the Cavalleria performance. The
next day, both baritones were lauded in the New York
In
the wake of the success of Weede’s Metropolitan debut, he was offered a
recording contract by Columbia Records.
One of his most successful Columbia
After
his initial success at Tonio, Weede spent the the next three seasons at the Met
performing in concerts and galas, usually singing one aria (typically, the Pagliacci prologue)
and perhaps singing in a trio, quartet, or other ensemble, but garnering very
little attention from the New York critics for these brief appearances.
All
of that changed on the evening of February 27, 1941, when Weede first
appeared in the title role in Rigoletto, in a cast that included Jussi
Bjoerling as the Duke of Mantua, Hilde Reggiani as Gilda, and Bruna Castagna as
Maddalena. Amid this strong cast, it was the previously-unheralded Weede
who netted the praise of all of the major critics.
"It
was not much of a Rigoletto at the Metropolitan for anybody
but Robert Weede last night," wrote Irving Kolodin in the New
York Sun. "However, what this American baritone accomplished in his
first appearance at the opera house in this role was striking enough to make
the occasion a memorable one, not only for him, but also for the
audience."
"As a primary asset," Kolodin continued, "Mr. Weede has a voice—a big voice, moreover, which fills the opera house with ease and doesn't require the forcing to which he sometimes resorted. But it has quality as well as size ... [and] he was entitled to the robust applause he received."
"As a primary asset," Kolodin continued, "Mr. Weede has a voice—a big voice, moreover, which fills the opera house with ease and doesn't require the forcing to which he sometimes resorted. But it has quality as well as size ... [and] he was entitled to the robust applause he received."
In
the New York Post, critic Edward O'Gorman wrote that
"Mr. Weede has an enviable baritone voice, one that is full and
robust, capable of a wide range of expression and yet one that has none of the
coarseness usually encountered in a voice of its type. Its chief characteristic
is perhaps its pliability. But the
element that distinguished Mr. Weede's characterization of Rigoletto was
neither vocal nor histrionic, although each was telling in its way, but an
uncanny sense of theatre that balanced the two in a performance that was a
personal triumph for the singer ...."
Writing
in the New York World-Telegram, Robert Bagar said that
"Mr. Weede's singing proved thoroughly compatible with the demands of
the part. His impersonation grew in stature as the evening wore on, and
in the emotional give-and-take of the third act he dominated the stage."
Although Weede’s first appearance in Rigoletto
was apparently not recorded, his performance of the demanding role during a
Saturday matinee radio broadcast on January 31, 1942, was preserved in an off-the-air
recording:
From 1941 to 1953,
Weede added Amonasro in Aida, Manfredo in L' Amore dei tre
re, Shaklovity in the Met premiere of Mussorgsky's Khovanshchina,
and Scarpia in Tosca to his Metropolitan Opera repertoire.
It was as Scarpia that he sang his last performance with the Met, a
matinee broadcast from Detroit
JAMES A. DRAKE
Robert Weede, By James A. Drake
ROBERT
WEEDE
By James A. Drake
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.
By James A. Drake
"This
place is worse than Hell," a frustrated Mario Lanza wrote to his
manager from the steaming-hot Army Air Force base in Marfa , Texas
The
young Mario Lanza was not alone in seeking out Robert Weede for help with vocal
technique. "Bob was our 'voice repairman,'" said Jan Peerce of
Weede's uncanny ability to pinpoint, analyze and, as Peerce put it, to
"repair" other singers' vocal problems. Other first-rank
singers including Norman Treigle, Dominic Cossa, and John Alexander also sought
Weede's help and advice at key points in their careers. At no time would
Weede accept any remuneration for assisting his colleagues when they were
experiencing vocal problems.
Jan
Peerce had sought Weede’s help during the only vocal crisis that the
otherwise-durable tenor ever experienced.
Weede helped Peerce regain his voice, and appeared with him in San
Francisco on The Standard Hour radio
series, where they sang the duet “Le minaccie i fieri accenti” from La Forza del Destino:
Weede
also appeared on radio with Peerce’s young brother-in-law, Richard Tucker, on The Squibb Hour, where Tucker had become
a frequent guest artist after being signed by the National Concert Artists
Corporation, an agency which secured radio appearances for both up-and-coming
and well-established classical musicians.
On
The Squibb Hour, accompanied by Lynn
Murray and his orchestra, the young Tucker and the already-established Weede
sang “Within the Temple There,” an English version of “Au fond du temple
saint,” the tenor-baritone duet from I Pescatori
di Perle:
Although
Tucker had not yet made his Metropolitan Opera debut when he appeared on The
Squibb Hour, Weede was first-rank baritone by then. Born Robert Wiedefeld in Baltimore ,
Maryland , on February 22, 1903, he studied
voice at the Eastman School of Music in the mid-1920's, and subsequently went
to Milan U.S.
Weede
made his Met debut on May 15, 1937, as Tonio in a double-bill performance of Pagliacci and Cavalleria Rusticana.
Not until the rehearsals were in progress did he realize that another
promising young American baritone, Thomas L. Thomas, had been scheduled for his
debut the same day, as Alfio in the Cavalleria performance. The
next day, both baritones were lauded in the New York
In
the wake of the success of Weede’s Metropolitan debut, he was offered a
recording contract by Columbia Records.
One of his most successful Columbia
After
his initial success at Tonio, Weede spent the the next three seasons at the Met
performing in concerts and galas, usually singing one aria (typically, the Pagliacci prologue)
and perhaps singing in a trio, quartet, or other ensemble, but garnering very
little attention from the New York critics for these brief appearances.
All
of that changed on the evening of February 27, 1941, when Weede first
appeared in the title role in Rigoletto, in a cast that included Jussi
Bjoerling as the Duke of Mantua, Hilde Reggiani as Gilda, and Bruna Castagna as
Maddalena. Amid this strong cast, it was the previously-unheralded Weede
who netted the
All
of that changed on the evening of February 27, 1941, when Weede first
appeared in the title role in Rigoletto, in a cast that included Jussi
Bjoerling as the Duke of Mantua, Hilde Reggiani as Gilda, and Bruna Castagna as
Maddalena. Amid this strong cast, it was the previously-unheralded Weede
who netted the praise of all of the major critics.
"It
was not much of a Rigoletto at the Metropolitan for anybody
but Robert Weede last night," wrote Irving Kolodin in the New
York Sun. "However, what this American baritone accomplished in his
first appearance at the opera house in this role was striking enough to make
the occasion a memorable one, not only for him, but also for the
audience."
"As a primary asset," Kolodin continued, "Mr. Weede has a voice—a big voice, moreover, which fills the opera house with ease and doesn't require the forcing to which he sometimes resorted. But it has quality as well as size ... [and] he was entitled to the robust applause he received."
"As a primary asset," Kolodin continued, "Mr. Weede has a voice—a big voice, moreover, which fills the opera house with ease and doesn't require the forcing to which he sometimes resorted. But it has quality as well as size ... [and] he was entitled to the robust applause he received."
In
the New York Post, critic Edward O'Gorman wrote that
"Mr. Weede has an enviable baritone voice, one that is full and
robust, capable of a wide range of expression and yet one that has none of the
coarseness usually encountered in a voice of its type. Its chief characteristic
is perhaps its pliability. But the
element that distinguished Mr. Weede's characterization of Rigoletto was
neither vocal nor histrionic, although each was telling in its way, but an
uncanny sense of theatre that balanced the two in a performance that was a
personal triumph for the singer ...."
Writing
in the New York World-Telegram, Robert Bagar said that
"Mr. Weede's singing proved thoroughly compatible with the demands of
the part. His impersonation grew in stature as the evening wore on, and
in the emotional give-and-take of the third act he dominated the stage."
Although Weede’s first appearance in Rigoletto
was apparently not recorded, his performance of the demanding role during a
Saturday matinee radio broadcast on January 31, 1942, was preserved in an
off-the-air recording:
From 1941 to 1953,
Weede added Amonasro in Aida, Manfredo in L' Amore dei tre
re, Shaklovity in the Met premiere of Mussorgsky's Khovanshchina,
and Scarpia in Tosca to his Metropolitan Opera repertoire.
It was as Scarpia that he sang his last performance with the Met, a
matinee broadcast from Detroit
Some of Weede’s
most successful Tosca performances,
however, occurred not in the U.S.
but in Mexico City Chicago
Weede
also made successful debuts with other opera companies, chiefly in Rigoletto,
beginning with the Chicago Opera in 1939, San Francisco
In
1956, Weede left the opera stage to appear on Broadway as Tony Esposito in the original
production of Frank Loesser's The Most Happy Fella, at the Imperial Theater in New York
City. Reviewing the opening performance,
New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson praised Loesser’s musical adaptation of
the “romance of a lovely waitress who marries a rich, ebullient vintner.”
Singling
out Weede’s performance as Tony, Atkinson wrote, “The music is beautifully
sung. Robert Weede, as the vintner, is a
wide, artless-looking man with a powerful voice that can travelthe full range
from romantic fervor to despair. He
sings the part with the authority of a professional.”
Weede
was also seen on Broadway in Milk and Honey from 1961-63 (which was also recorded by
Columbia Records) and Cry for Us All in 1970. But neither Milk
and Honey nor Cry For Us All impressed critics and audiences to the
same degree that Weede's Most Happy Fella had. For that, Weede was nominated for, and
received, the 1956 Tony award for "Best Performance by a Leading Actor in
a Musical."
Because
of his engaging personality, both onscreen and off, and his first-rate acting
and nuanced characterizations, Weede's voice was only infrequently assessed by
the same criteria that are applied to almost other operatic voices. One
who had no difficulty doing so was Max De Schaunsee, who had reviewed every
major singer since Giovanni Martinelli arrived in New York
Speaking of Weede's voice at the time of his early success as Tonio in Pagaliacci, De Schaunsee described it "as a big voice, but not a beautiful voice in the usual sense of that phrase--not in the class of Lawrence Tibbett, or John Charles Thomas, or Leonard Warren and Robert Merrill.”
“Although
he was definitely a baritone,” De Schaunsee said, “Weede’s singing often took
on more of a tenor quality in his middle and upper range. But it was not as a singer per se that he made his mark. He was a superb actor, an actor who could
sing, an actor who was an artist in the finest sense of that word."
Robert Weede died in Walnut Creek, California, on July 9,1972. But through his numerous recordings and radio appearances, and the relatively few television appearances he made, he earned a form of immortality that few artists experience in their lifetimes.
JAMES A. DRAKE
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