ÍøÆغÚÁÏ

American soprano Jessye Norman was one of the most important figures of the 20th and early 21st century opera. In her performances of prominent operatic roles, as well as a celebrated recital and recording career, she was well regarded throughout the world.

Norman was born on September 15, 1945, in Augusta, Georgia. She started singing spirituals at the age of four at Mount Calvary Baptist Church; one Saturday, while doing her chores, she heard an opera for the first time, broadcast on the radio. She became an instant opera fan and started listening to recordings of Marian Anderson and Leontyne Price. Nat "King" Cole was also a major inspiration for her. At 16, Norman began studying at Howard University, where her voice teacher was Carolyn Grant. She sang in the university chorus and worked as a soloist at the Lincoln Temple United Church of Christ. In 1965, she won the National Society of Arts and Letters singing competition. She continued her studies at Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore and at the University of Michigan, where her most important teachers were Elizabeth Mannion and Pierre Bernac.

In 1968, Norman won the Munich Competition, leading to her operatic debut as Elisabeth in Wagner's Tannhäuser in Berlin. A major European operatic career quickly developed: she appeared in Meyerbeer's L'Africaine at Maggio Musicale in Florence in 1971, Verdi's Aïda at La Scala in Milan in 1972, and in Berlioz's Les Troyens at London's Covent Garden the same year. These roles bespeak a major part of Norman's stage persona: a commanding and noble bearing, partly due to her uncommon height and size. However, this was more a function of her unique, rich, and powerful voice. She had an uncommonly wide range, encompassing all female voice registers from contralto to the high dramatic soprano.

As her operatic career developed, Norman also made important recital debuts, including London and New York in 1973. She made an extensive North American concert debut in 1976 and 1977 but did not appear in opera in the U.S. until 1982. This was with the Opera Company of Philadelphia, in a double bill as Dido in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas and Queen Jocasta in Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex. Her Metropolitan Opera debut was as Cassandra in 1983, the opening night of the Met's centennial season.

Her interpretation of Strauss' Four Last Songs was legendary. Its slowness was controversial, but the tonal qualities of her voice were ideal for these final works of the great Romantic German lieder tradition. She also sang Schoenberg's Gurrelieder and his opera Erwartung; she sang this on a memorable double bill at the Met with Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle, which was broadcast nationally. She appeared on live broadcasts of season-opening concerts of the New York Philharmonic.

Norman was acclaimed in her singing of Mussorgsky songs in the original Russian, the German Romantic lieder repertoire, and French music from Berlioz to contemporary composers. Another major part of her musical life was in the performance of American music. These included jazz standards, the sacred music of Duke Ellington, African American spirituals, and woman.life.song., a song cycle composed by Judith Weir, commissioned for Norman by Carnegie Hall.

Throughout her life, Norman was asked to perform in many important ceremonies in the U.S. and abroad. These include singing the French national anthem for the 200th anniversary of the French revolution, the funeral of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the opening ceremony of the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, and singing America, the Beautiful at the dedication of the memorial columns of light at the site of the World Trade Center in New York.

Norman had an extensive and successful recording career, mainly recording on the Philips label. She released albums of opera, recital, jazz, and Christmas music. She won five Grammy awards, including the "Grammy for Lifetime Achievement" in 2006.

Jessye Norman died in New York on September 30, 2019, following complications from a spinal cord injury suffered in 2015. ~ Joseph Stevenson & Keith Finke

Edita Gruberová was a coloratura soprano, best known for her performances of Mozart and Strauss operas, but also strongly identified with the bel canto revival. She studied in her hometown of Bratislava, and then in Vienna and Prague, finally making her professional debut as Rosina in Rossini's Barber of Seville at the Slovak National Theater in 1968. An engagement to sing Mozart's Queen of the Night with the Vienna State Opera in 1970 was pivotal in establishing her career. She joined the company as a regular member in 1972, and before long she had made successful debuts at Glyndebourne (1973), the Salzburg Festival (1974, as Thibault in Verdi's Don Carlo with Karajan), and the Metropolitan Opera (1977, again as Mozart's Queen). During the late 1970s and early 1980s she debuted at many of the world's other major houses, including Covent Garden, La Scala, and the Chicago Lyric, but her schedule remained focused around the houses of central Europe -- a trend that continued throughout her career. Gruberová pursued a full schedule of operatic and concert appearances well into the 2000s.

Other Mozart roles that Gruberová was strongly associated with included Constanze in Die Entführung aus dem Serail and, somewhat surprisingly, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni -- a more lyrical role that lacked the high-flying coloratura that was usually her calling card. Her performances of Zerbinetta in Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos were considered among the best ever heard. Among the bel canto operas, Donizetti's Lucia and Anna Bolena, Rossini's Semiramide, and Bellini's I Capuleti e I Montecchi figured prominently in her success. Edita Gruberová died on October 18, 2021 in Zurich, Switzerland. She was 74 years old.

Julia Varady is a highly respected soprano who has had a major European career and considerable success elsewhere.

She comes from a fabled part of Rumania that used to belong to Hungary and is home to most of Rumania's ethnic Hungarian population. She studied at the Conservatory in Cluj (formerly Klausenberg), then at the conservatory in the capital city of Bucharest.

She returned to Cluj and in 1960 gained a contract with the Cluj Opera and quickly was given the leading roles in the lyric-dramatic repertory, including Judith in Bluebeard's Castle, Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, Butterfly in Madama Butterfly (after originally playing the short part of Kate Pinkerton), the Marriage of Figaro (in which she sang, at various times, all three soprano roles), Turandot (as Liù), Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana, and Desdemona in Verdi's Otello. During this period she also made guest appearances at the National Opera of Bucharest and in Budapest, Hungary.

In 1970 she joined the company of the Frankfurt-am-Main Opera House at the invitation of its music director, Christoph von Dohnanyi and continued to expand her already large repertory, singing Margarethe in Gounod's Faust, Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, Antonio in Tales of Hoffman, and the Young Maiden in a historic performance of Schoenberg's Moses und Aron, among other parts. In guest appearances in Cologne she had a large success as Violetta in Traviata.

She spent the 1972 - 1973 season with the Bavarian State Opera in Munich following a highly successful appearance in the Munich Festival as Vitellia in Mozart's Clemenza di Tito. As a member of that company she had a triumphal portrayal of Elettra in the same composer's Idomeneo and added Senta in Flying Dutchman and Aïda to her repertory.

During those same years she sang with the leading baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, to whom she was married in 1974. (Their son Martin Fischer-Dieskau began a conducting career in the 1990s.)

By now Varady was appearing at the major international operatic venues and continuing to add important roles to her repertory. She sang at the Edinburgh Festival, Salzburg Festival and other international summer events. Her notable debuts included the Deutsche Opera Berlin in 1978 (Countess in Nozze di Figaro), Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (1982, Aïda), Metropolitan Opera (1977 - 1978 season as Donna Elvira), and in the newly opened Bastille Opera in Paris in 1995 (Abigaille in Verdi's Nabucco).

She sang all the major roles in operas of Mozart and Verdi, several Puccini and Strauss roles (Composer, Arabella, and the Empress in Die Frau ohne Schatten), and such other parts as Orfeo and Alceste in Gluck's operas, Yaroslavna in Prince Igor, Micaëla in Carmen, Handel's Ariodante, Adele in Rossini's Le Comte Ory and the title role in his Cenerentola, Beethoven's Leonora, and the Tchaikovsky roles of Tatyana in Eugene Onegin and Lisa in Queen of Spades.

She has had particular success in Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle singing opposite Fischer-Dieskau. The husband and wife team also scored a major success in Aribert Reiman's opera Lear, with Fischer-Dieskau in the title role and Varady as Cordelia, in Spontini's Olympie, and in Halévy's La juive.

The story of singer Paul Frey's entry into the world of music is the sort that should inspire almost anyone who has ever felt even the hint of a notion about exploring a hidden talent. Born in Heidelberg, Ontario, in 1941 to a Mennonite family, he sang in a church quartet as a boy, but even with the encouragement of his teachers to pursue music, he followed a more conventional path for his life -- he made a living driving a truck, eventually owning his own company, and also played hockey. As he told the story in a film by Werner Herzog, there came a point in the early '70s where Frey fractured his hip during a game and found himself laid up for weeks. During that time, a friend gave him a Mario Lanza record to listen to, almost as a gag gift; instead, Frey was fascinated enough by the late screen legend's singing that a whole new chapter in his life opened up. Where his musical boundaries as an adult had previously been described by the work of Elvis Presley, he suddenly became fascinated by opera. He took up serious voice study, sold his trucking company, and earned a scholarship to the University of Toronto Opera School. He took the music courses he needed to fill the gaps in his education, and in 1976 was engaged to sing Werther opposite Maureen Forrester in a concert production. Two years later, he made his formal operatic debut singing Werther at the Stadttheater Basel, Switzerland; he also sang Fidelio and The Bartered Bride that year, in what became a long-term engagement. And in 1985, he was first offered the chance to sing Lohengrin at Bayreuth, which he declined because of his obligations to the Basel company. A year later, however, he replaced an indisposed Peter Hoffmann as Lohengrin at Mannheim, where he was heard by Wolfgang Wagner, who engaged him to sing at Bayreuth, where he made his debut in 1987. He later repeated the role in subsequent years, including two productions under Werner Herzog. That same year, in addition to working at all of the major opera houses in Europe, Frey made his Metropolitan Opera debut as Bacchus in Ariadne Auf Naxos; a year later he replaced Plácido Domingo as Lohengrin at Covent Garden. Most of Frey's career has been spent in Europe, and he resided in Switzerland since the 1970s. In addition to essaying numerous established roles appropriate to his heldentenor range, he has also had the relatively rare chance, in the modern musical world, to create an operatic role as Captain Alfred Dreyfus in the 1994 Berlin premiere of Jost Meier and George R. Whyte's The Alfred Dreyfus Affair.

Since the mid-'80s, Olaf Bär has been counted among the more prominent German baritones of his generation. He has sung important operatic roles in the works of Richard Strauss, Mozart, Weber, and many others, but has especially distinguished himself in the lieder of Schubert and Schumann.

Bär was born in Dresden, Germany, on December 19, 1957. As a child he exhibited rare vocal talent and, in 1968, was taken into the Dresden Children's Choir. He eventually began studies at the Hochschule für Musik in his native city.

In his mid-twenties he took a string of first prizes at major vocal competitions that included the Dvorák competition in Karlovy Vary, Czechoslovakia (1982), and London's Walther Grüner Lieder Competition (1983).

1985 was a pivotal year for Bär: he became a member of the Dresden State Opera, made his first recording with EMI and also debuted at Covent Garden singing Harlequin in Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos. That premiere EMI recording was an acclaimed lieder disc of Schumann's Dichterliebe, Op. 48, and Liederkreis, Op. 39. He would later record other lieder repertory, including Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin, which garnered him a Gramophone Award.

In 1986 Bär scored a pair of successes when he appeared at both La Scala and the Vienna State Opera portraying Papageno from Mozart's The Magic Flute, a role he would reprise in his American debut at the Chicago Lyric Opera in 1996. Appearances at Glyndebourne in 1987 and 1991 in Richard Strauss and Mozart operas further fueled his meteoric ascent, an ascent that hardly slowed when the singer confronted and overcame possibly career-ending vocal problems over a stretch of nearly two years.

Bär made numerous recordings in the mid-'90s with other major singers, including Anne Sofie von Otter (of Wolf's Spanisches Liederbuch in 1995) and Dawn Upshaw (of Wolf's Italienisches Liederbuch in 1996). Bär remained active on the operatic stage despite his growing attention to the lieder genre and the enormous successes it has brought him. At the 1999 Vienna Fesitival he sang Dr. Falke in Die Fledermaus, a role he successfully reprised at the 2001 Salzburg Festival. That same year he also appeared in Schubert's Alfonso und Estrella at the Zurich Opera House. In Paris in 2005, he once again reprised one of his favorite roles, that of Papageno. Bär has lived most of his life in Dresden.

During a career that spanned nearly five decades, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau established himself as one of the most accomplished performing artists of the twentieth century. He is widely considered to have been the finest modern interpreter of German lieder, and his extensive operatic career was noted for fine musicianship and powerful characterization. He has also made important contributions as an author, conductor, and teacher.

Born in Berlin on May 28, 1925, Fischer-Dieskau began his vocal studies at the age of 16, only shortly before being drafted into the Nazi Wehrmacht. After two years as a prisoner of war, the young baritone returned to Germany and soon made his oratorio debut in Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem, and his stage debut in Verdi's Don Carlos (Posa). Engaged as the 'house' lyric baritone (kammersänger) at the Berlin Städtische Oper, he also began making guest appearances at the Vienna Staatsoper, and the Salzburg Festival. In the early 1950's he began a series of engagements at the Bayreuth festival, establishing a lasting relationship with the music of Wagner, especially the role of Wolfram in Tannhäuser. In the following decades, Fischer-Dieskau would traverse an impressive range of operatic roles, including Don Giovanni in Mozart's eponymous work, Mittenhofer in Hans Werner Henze's Elegy for Young Lovers, and John the Baptist in Strauss' Salome; his most critically admired performances were as Don Alfonso in Così fan tutte, Germont père in La Traviata, and Count Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro.

Fischer-Dieskau's recital career began equally early and impressively -- with a 1948 Radio Berlin broadcast of Schubert's Winterreise; however, it was with his first concerts and recordings with the English collaborative pianist Gerald Moore that his international fame began to spread. Together, the two of them recorded every song of Schubert, Schumann, and Wolf (excluding those few that are generally reserved for the female voice) and considerable portions of those by Brahms, Strauss, Loewe, and Beethoven. This catalogue of repertoire is impressive for its sheer size, and even more so for its consistent excellence; while opinions have sometimes diverged on the subjective merits of Fischer-Dieskau's voice, there is no question that his performances of lieder represented the perfect wedding of poetry and lyricism -- the very essence of the lied. While his collaboration with Gerald Moore was singular in its productivity, Fischer-Dieskau was by no means a "one-pianist" man. His work with accompanist Jörg Demus represents an impressive catalogue of its own, and he made memorable appearances and recordings with many other leading musicians, such as Alfred Brendel, Vladimir Horowitz, Daniel Barenboim, and Sviatoslav Richter. Also, his repertoire was by no means limited to works of the Romantic masters; he has championed the works of lesser-known composers, such as Othmar Schoeck. His cumulative body of recorded performances is stunning, perhaps best illustrated by the number of pieces of which his discography contains multiple (sometimes as many as four!) performances. A number of composers wrote works for him, the most notable of which is Benjamin Britten (Songs and Proverbs of William Blake), whose War Requiem the baritone also premiered in 1962.

Certainly Fischer-Dieskau is best characterized by his performances of works for voice and piano, in which his imagination, musicianship, and vocal timbre were showcased to the fullest. However, he made equal strides in the realm of orchestral lieder; his performances of Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Rückert Lieder, and Kindertotenlieder are some of the finest on record. Other works he performed with orchestra included the Michelangelo Sonnets of Dmitri Shostakovich, Brahms' German Requiem, and numerous cantatas of Bach and Telemann.

Even though he spent much of his career behind the Iron Curtain in Communist East Germany, conductor Kurt Masur was one of the most respected conductors of the 20th century and was recognized internationally. The longtime conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig, he conducted the New York Philharmonic and the London Philharmonic in later life and was acclaimed for his work with both. Masur's recording catalog is vast, and his performances began to appear in the West even before German reunification. His recordings continued to appear in reissues well after his death; a 1971 recording of Mendelssohn's 12 Jugendsinfonien was issued by the Berlin Classics label in 2023.

Masur was born on July 18, 1927, in Brieg in the German province of Lower Silesia (now Brzeg, Poland). Masur's father was an electrical engineer, and Masur completed an engineer's apprenticeship and went to work for his father. However, he also loved music and took piano lessons as a teen from Katharina Hartmann, and studied piano and cello at the University of Breslau (now the University of Wrocław, Poland). Masur was active as a paratrooper with the German army during World War II, and of his 150-man unit, only 27 survived. After the war, he enrolled at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy in Leipzig, remaining there for several years but dropping out at 21 when he got a job as a répétiteur (rehearsal coach) at what is now the Halle Opera House. Masur's rise through the conducting ranks in the 1950s followed the old Kapellmeister model at first; he held that position with the Stadttheater Erfurt from 1951 to 1953 and then the same post with the Leipzig Opera Theater from 1953 to 1955. In 1955, he became the conductor of the Dresden Philharmonic; he returned to operatic posts at the State Theater of Mecklenburg and then the Komische Oper Berlin before returning to the Dresden Philharmonic from 1967 to 1972.

In 1970, Masur assumed the position for which he would become best known, that of Gewandhauskapellmeister of Leipzig, or conductor and artistic director of the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig. This was the most prestigious ensemble in the former East Germany, with a long history dating back to its founder and first conductor, Felix Mendelssohn. Masur remained the orchestra's conductor until 1991, making many recordings with the group; an early one, issued in 1974, featured Mendelssohn's cantata Die erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60. Some of Masur's albums were issued only in the Communist world, but as his popularity grew, he was allowed to perform in the West, and his albums were sold there. He conducted the Cleveland Orchestra in 1974 and took the Gewandhaus Orchestra on a U.S. tour that year. In 1981, he made his debut with the New York Philharmonic. In the last days of East Germany's Communist regime, Masur was widely noted for his activities in support of human rights.

In 1991, he was named music director of the New York Philharmonic, succeeding the modernist Pierre Boulez and the experimentally oriented Zubin Mehta. Masur, with a focus on middle-of-the-road German and Russian repertory, was credited with sharpening the orchestra's sound over his 11 years at the helm. In 1991 alone, he released ten albums, many of them on the Teldec label; some featured the Gewandhaus Orchestra and others the New York Philharmonic. Masur held positions as music director of the London Philharmonic from 2000 to 2007 and of the Orchestre National de France from 2002 to 2008. He maintained a busy schedule of guest appearances but revealed in 2012 that he was suffering from Parkinson's disease. Masur died on December 19, 2015, in Greenwich, Connecticut. His recording catalog, with Beethoven the most common composer but also including such novelties as a performance of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue with the Gewandhaus Orchestra, numbered some 300 releases; by the mid-2020s, the flow of reissues of his music had hardly slowed. Masur was honored with a "Google Doodle" on the anniversary of his birth in 2018. ~ James Manheim