ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ต.ค. 2024
- An interview with Lauritz Melchior. Topics:
Youth, first engagements, choice of repertoire, methods of studying, favourite role, favourite colleagues, modern conductors, Toscanini, new singers, modern education, problems of opera today
He was my Grandfather, and one of the loveliest people you could ever wish to meet.
How wonderful for you! ❤
It was recorded to mark his 81st. birthday, at his home, appropriately named The Viking.
It was 1971, and he died just short of his 83rd., in 1973.
First published on Eklipse Records, 1993.
Some people don’t like him, but I like him a lot.
He’s such a sweet old man. Very content with his life and thankful to all those he got to sing with.
The fact that he doesn’t speak the way he sings shows that speaking voice is not always a guarantee for correctly identifying someone’s voice type. For us men at least, it’s probably only 80% accurate.
Melchior would be so disappointed in the lack of support for the arts now...
Melchior was in a class of his own as far as vocal talent is concerned in the heavy tenor roles.
It was a tragedy that the Met never allowed him to sing Otello. The few snippets we have of him in Italian opera are wonderful, even when they are sung in German. He called his gift as a touch of God's little finger. I think we should regard him as God's gift to humanity. My favourite singer for more than fifty years.
His Italian was awful.
@@williammountfield8508 Who cares.
In italian repertoire he could have been a wonderful Baritono Verdiano.
He was in fact a Dramatic Baritone (or perhaps a Dramatic Bass-baritone, I cannot be sure) who decided to create a Heldentenor career since he was gifted (and ofc there was a lot of hard work involved) with a huge control over his whole voice spanning roughly CounterLow C2 to High C5.
He especially had an incredible and almost praeternatural amount of control and ease over his higher tessitura and higher notes and those two facts contributed to him deciding to sing as Heldentenor instead of Dramatic Baritone.
His low F sounded almost like that of a proper basso profondo drammatico (hell, possibly better than some nowadays ones...) and his HIGH Fs and F sharps sounded like those of a proper basso cantante/drammatico verdiano (I mean he could have EASILY sung both Attila AND even Zaccaria from Nabucco, even way better than a lot of modern basses).
The dynamics in his voice sounded 100% pure baritone and not even of a higher kind, more of a lower baritone voice (I mean that in a good way) and this is even after he had done all the possible kind of hard work in order to create a tenor voice, plus tessituras from italian tenor roles were usually out of his possibilites, even lower ones would strain him and he'd sing belting and strained and suffering and completely out of proper tempo in order to try and squeal notes through the high tessitura.
Most italian tenor roles were too high for him and he always sounded strained and suffering when he tried to sing something from italian or neapolitan tradition.
Verdi's Otello would perhaps be adequate (I'm not completely sure, I'd have to thoroughly compare the scores from his repertoire) and I'd have loved to hear him in German, he could have never managed to sing it in Italian tho (his Italian was AWFUL indeed, this comes from a great fan who adores him so please note I'm not trying to diss him).
But what I'd love more is having had him as Conte di Luna, Marchese di Posa, Nabucco, Rigoletto, Renato from Un Ballo in Maschera, Simon Boccanegra, Jago in Otello...
@@edraith Nah lol he's definitely a dramatic tenor. If you hear him in many of his songs, especially earlier in his career as a baritone, his low notes at D3 and below were not the part of his voice where he shined, though he did sound decent down there just not amazing. I'll respectfully disagree that his high F's sound like a basso cantante's high F, they sound like a tenor's. Also, his passaggio is that of a lower-ranged tenor.
@@bradycall1889 thanks, I might have slightly overstated and might need to reconsider. Don't be surprised if I answer again in a couple of months/years.
Thx so much for uploading the interview...The greatest Wagner Tenor all times and together with Flagstad the gratest Sopran ever...above everything..and will never reached again
And fav role. Tristan 🙂
And that he was frst trained as an Bariton, and the became Helden tenor, I think, this what made him so outstanding..regarding singing the deeper tones, like Flagstad
How could he forget his last Isolde - Helen Traubel:)
...compared to him, all heldentenors are impostors.....he was an unequalled colossus, like Flagstad....I I saw him at a Met Gala..on TV...in 1969.....just to see him walk down the aisle was amazing
Max Lorenz... an impostor?!
@aaronsande It is from 1970 I think.
The fact that Melchior mentions the change from Rudolf Bing to Göran Gentele as the new director of the Met indicates that this interview must have taken place somewhat around 1971. (Gentele had become director in 1972, but happened to die in a car accident, before the opening night of his first season.) Melchior, born 1890, lived until 1973, so at the time of the interview he must have been a bit more than 80 years old.