Peter Lindroos (1944-2003)

The following article will appear, translated into Finnish, in a book by Torsten Brander about the great tenor Peter Lindroos.

PETER LINDROOS AND HIS PLACE AMONG THE GREAT TENORS

by Leonardo Ciampa

There is an important difference between publicity in the Caruso era and publicity in the Pavarotti era. Caruso did not have a manager. Caruso didn't “become” the greatest tenor in the world, because he already was the greatest tenor in the world. There were no dissenting opinions. No one in Caruso's day said, “Caruso wasn't that good; he was just OK.” Everyone agreed that he was the greatest – critics, colleagues, public.

Pavarotti had a manager named Breslin. Thanks to the hard work of Breslin, Pavarotti “became” the greatest tenor in the world. Unfortunately, no singer, no critic, no musician – no one who knew anything about singing – believed that he was the greatest. The public believed what they were told. However, they were not given the option of comparison. Had Breslin lined up Pavarotti, Aragall, Gedda, Kraus, and fifteen other tenors, would the public still have voted Pavarotti the greatest? In such a survey, probably Pavarotti would have come in last.

I needed hear only a few minutes of Lindroos's singing to know that he was one of the greatest tenors in the world. He had everything – great voice, great technique, great musicianship, great expression. He was great in every respect that a tenor ought be great.

So why didn't Lindroos become more famous?

Invariably, when one person becomes famous and another of equal talent does not, the reason has nothing to do with music. Events occur. Choices are made. I am not Lindroos's biographer; I am not equipped to explain why his life's path did not take him to the Metropolitan. If I were the director of the Metropolitan and I heard Lindroos sing for a few minutes, I would have said, “He is a very great singer; he shall sing here.” However, the fact that I have an ear does not, in itself, earn me the title, “Director of the Metropolitan.” In fact, having an ear counts for virtually nothing.

The other problem is that overall musicianship is not marketable. If you are a pianist who plays two piano concertos without wrong notes, you can get a New York manager and play 100 concerto performances a year, playing each concerto 50 times. If, instead, you are a composer and an organist and a pianist and a conductor and also a singer, what can a New York manager do with that? How does the manager market you? The better a musician you are, the worse (not better, worse) chance you have of being world-famous. J. S. Bach would not have been world-famous in the 20th century, because no manager in New York would have gone near him.

Rather than dwell on what the world did not recognize, let me dwell on what I do recognize. I recognize that Lindroos had everything. He was one of the most satisfying tenors in the world – satisfying because it was impossible to say, “Something is lacking.” The voice itself was remarkable in its beauty – a beauty that only a Scandinavian voice can have. His diction was formidable; he sang complete operas in eight languages. His technique was that of the great singers of previous generations. In fact, I don't think the Metropolitan would have appreciated his vocal production, which was more akin to the tenors of the 1920s than to those of the 1970s. However, the 1920s technique allows one to sing 1700 operatic performances (which Lindroos did); the 1970s technique does not. Lindroos's musicianship was very strong and imbued every note he sang. His humanity was very rich – he felt the highs, he felt the lows, and this depth of feeling created a wide palette of emotional colors with which he could paint his characters. All of these traits – voice, technique, diction, musicianship, humanity, and Scandinavian genes – combined to produce a tenor, next to whom the Pavarottis and Domingos seem to be utter charlatans.

It is of crucial importance that all of the recordings of Peter Lindroos be made available – so that musicians can study them, and so that music lovers can be blessed by them.

Mary B. Davenport (1919-2010)

Friends,

Today, through a random Google search, I learned that more than nine months ago, the great contralto and teacher Mary Davenport passed away in Albuquerque. She died on my birthday, January 17. She was ten days shy of 91.

I am profoundly saddened by her loss. In her memory and honor, I quote in full my chapter on her from The Twilight of Belcanto.

***

"Sundays in Golders Green"

“It’s too easy to describe the singing of Mary Davenport as a miracle. God did indeed bestow a uniquely lovely timbre on her, the brightest and most golden of all deep contralto sounds, without a trace of what Kathleen Ferrier used to call the ‘goitrous hoot’ of the species.
“But that is not what has enabled Mary Davenport to preserve that timbre, unblemished, through more than four decades of singing, preserve the perfect evenness of scale, the clarity of the sound's definition, the absolute steadiness of tone — some of Brahms’s Alto Rhapsody sounded as if an angel had granted a pipe organ the ability to sing legato and phrase poetry with feeling. That is technique and discipline.”
Richard Dyer (Boston Globe, 12 April 1986, p. 20)

Like Patricia Craig, Mary Davenport was a teacher who had had a successful career on European and American stages as a singer. (It’s always refreshing when voice teachers actually sang somewhere!) In 2003 I telephoned the 84-year-old mezzosoprano, to whom I hadn’t spoken in several years. The voice I heard sent shivers down my spine. It was a young voice, shiny like silver, with not a soupçon of age. In pitch and clarity, this voice could have been 35, or 25. My wife also heard the voice on the machine and said, “How old did you say she was?”

This is no accident. Many singers have thought about healthy speech placement. Mary Davenport devoted her life to it.

Davenport was born in Holyoke, Massachusetts, in 1919. At age 19 she studied as an exchange student at the University of London. She studied voice with a very nice man at the Royal College of Music, with whom she also studied privately. The nice man’s name was Alberto García (1875-1946), the grandson of Manuel García II and great-nephew of Malibran and Viardot! Alberto was the last in the García singing legacy.

The teenager spent many Sundays with Mr. “Garsha” (as the Brits pronounced it) and his family in Golders Green (a section of London). Alberto spoke often of his famous aunts, grandfather, and of course their father, Manuel García the First (1775-1832). Manuel I was born in Seville. He was baptized “Manuel del Populo Vincente Rodriguez.” Manuel I’s opera troupe — including his three famous children — traveled to New York, and on 29 November 1825 gave the very first Italian opera ever to be heard on the soil of the New World. The work was Il Barbiere di Siviglia; the Almaviva was Manuel I, who had created the role. Due to a rival claque, this New World premiere was an utter fiasco. García attempted to salvage it by singing a Spanish song, accompanying himself on the guitar.

With particular fondness, Alberto remembered the 101st birthday gala for his father, Manuel II, held at Royal Albert Hall in 1906. Alberto told Mary that his father sang a song on the occasion (!). I wondered if such a thing could be true. Sure enough, García’s biographer confirmed that there was a 101st birthday gala on 17 March 1906 and that the old man sang a song. But he added a spinetingling detail: The song in question was Spanish, and García accompanied himself on guitar … exactly as his father had done 81 years previous. Could it have been the same song?

Davenport returned to America, where she studied at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. Her teacher was one of the most famous soprani of the day, Elisabeth Schumann. Ms. Schumann taught mostly soprani and very few mezzisoprani; however, Mary was no ordinary student, and Schumann accepted her. Ms. Schumann was probably not one of those teachers who did much vocal or technical woodshedding (which Mary didn’t much need anyway). What she did have, Mary remembers, was an extraordinary musicality and musical mind. And she couldn’t have hurt Mary’s ease in the high register.

In New York, Davenport made a triumphant debut recital, which was reviewed on the front page of the New York World Telegram & Sun. A career in radio began in the ’40s, when she succeeded Eileen Farrell on the CBS program Invitation to Music. Davenport was accompanied by the CBS Symphony, conducted by Bernard Herrmann. Herrmann (1911-1975) was a famous film composer who wrote the scores for many Hitchcock films, as well as for Citizen Kane, etc.

Farrell and Davenport remained long-time friends, and when the latter was shopping for a new teacher, Farrell said, “Why not Mrs. Mac?” Mary was curious to try out “Mrs. Mac,” who had in Mary’s words “saved” Farrell. “Mrs. Mac” was Eleanor McClellan.

I remember clearly the story of Mary’s first lesson with McClellan, despite the decade that has elapsed since I heard it. Mary was in her 20s. McClellan was at least 90. Mary sang a piece; McClellan said nothing. She went up to Mary, touched her abdomen and said, “You’re holding. Let go.” For the next half-century, Mary kept that advice in her heart.

McClellan also stressed the speech aspect of singing and the huge importance of speaking correctly. Advice that also stuck.

Davenport went on to perform in opera (including many performances of The Medium), concert (appearances with the New York Philharmonic and Philadelphia Orchestra), and recital. She enjoyed a successful operatic career in Germany and Switzerland, including thirteen seasons at Zurich’s beautiful opera house. Other operatic engagements in Europe included Barcelona but, unfortunately, did not include any Italian cities.

From there, Davenport returned to Massachusetts and joined the voice faculty of Boston University, where she would remain for 32 years. Gradually she devoted more time to teaching and less to performing. But she did sing with the most important orchestras in Boston, including the Boston Symphony (the first time in 1944, the last time thirty years later). A Mahler performance with Ben Zander’s Boston Philharmonic also remains in the concertgoer’s memory.
Though music critics generally limit their fraternization with musicians, the Boston Globe critic Richard Dyer was unable to conceal a well-justified fondness for Mary, as a musician and person.

Her tone fused brightness with depth, and long past the age when most singers retire, Davenport still commanded a tone that was large, steady, and glowing. What turned out to be her final local appearance was in Brahms’s Alto Rhapsody at Boston University in 1986, her voice still radiant and expressive, the legato technique recalling the golden age of singing. Her students in more recent years report that during lessons Davenport still rang out commandingly over a three-octave range. She was an imposing and elegant presence at concerts, and her unsparing views were never a secret because this was a voice that carried. (Boston Globe, June 20, 1997, p. D16)

Notice that Dyer used form of the word “command” twice in one paragraph. This was appropriate. There was something commanding about Mary. Yet despite her aristocratic upbringing, I always found her to be an affectionate, gentle person uninterested in keeping up false appearances. She just was someone who relished quality, in people and in things. If she had a clock, it was a beautiful clock. If she had a dress, it was one her seamstress made for her. Her library contained the best books, in the best editions. It was as if her stomach couldn’t quite take anything, or anyone, that didn’t exude quality.

As for her silvery mezzosoprano, Dyer’s description of it corroborates my memory exactly. It really was three octaves, low C to high C. I never heard the high C, but I heard many effortless B-flats. Every note in her range had the quality of being firm yet floating. In my earthly existence, I have never heard a singer with such an evenness from top to bottom. Almost stubbornly even. There was not even a vestige of a register break anywhere. And there were no fabricated tones. You never felt, “On that note she sounded like a soprano,” or “On that note she sounded like a contralto.” It was HER VOICE, round and beautiful, at every point in her range.

Never in my life did I meet a person so diametrically opposed to the pushing of the voice. She’d rather cut off her arm, one felt. On the other hand, Mary hardly needed to push. Her voice was so well-placed that she would talk barely above pianissimo, and you could hear her down the hall. Even on the phone the voice was magisterial. Her whole life and heart seemed completely dedicated to placing the vowels. This is why she could be heard without difficulty against an orchestra, why she still had a high Bb and C at age 75.

Mary recorded not a fraction of that which her talent warranted. She did record a major work with Jan Peerce and Martina Arroyo. And I wish I could say that the major work they recorded was Verdi’s Aïda or Trovatore or Requiem. Instead, it was Handel’s Judas Maccabeus. Yuck! I adore Handel, but that piddly little role of the Israelite woman barely gave a taste of what Mary could do.

[Footnote: But the tenor role was meaty, and Jan Peerce really wanted to do it. The recording sessions took place in Vienna. “We were in the control room,” Mary remembered, “and Peerce said to me, ‘Where have you been all my life?’ Peerce was very encouraging to young singers.” (Conversation with the author, October 2003).]

Other recordings which are not on CD include a L’Enfance du Christ recorded for Columbia, with Léopold Simoneau, Martial Singher, and Donald Gramm, conducted by Tom Scherman.

Perhaps Mary’s best recording — at least the one with which she herself is happiest — is the aforementioned Alto Rhapsody, performed at Boston University and conducted by Thomas Dunn. The singer was 67 years old. Though never released commercially, this recording would quickly become a collector’s item were it to be made available.

The major labels should have broken her door down and fought over who would get to record her in a corpus of Brahms and Mahler and Verdi and Duparc and repertoire in English. That they didn’t is to the eternal detriment of their discographies.

As a teacher, Mary was extremely gentle and empathetic — on a personal level. On a musical level she could be terrifying. She let nothing go by, sometimes stopping the student after every note. This was hard on some students, to say nothing of the piano accompanists! I loved every second of it. It sharpened my ears considerably. Often I felt as though I was the one receiving the lesson. I think that’s why Mary took to me; I exhibited some of the enthusiasm that ideally the students would have demonstrated.

It’s not for me to speak of Mary’s “method” or “technique.” Cedo maiori. But I’ll offer a few observations that made an impression on me.

Mary was not vague about what she wanted: She wanted five pure vowels, legate, and in all the languages. And believe me, her French sounded French, her German sounded German, and (as the critics pointed out) one couldn’t have hoped for more beautiful or understandable English.

Of the brilliant mental images that Mary conjured for her students, the two that I most vividly remember are the concept of “dropping in” to the note and that of letting the brain take care of pitch.

With “dropping in,” Mary had the students imagine that the sound was coming down into the placement from above, not up from the throat. Schipa, I later learned, gave similar advice; the tone, he said, should come down “from heaven.” And when Corelli spoke of the “curve” that the sound must make in the cavity, the concept was not dissimilar.

Of course there are two presumptions: (a) the vowels and posizione are correct, otherwise there’s nothing to drop into; and (b) the breathing is correct. Mary would say, “The breath is ready, and you coordinate it with the placement.” (Of course, to make the breath “ready” but not “held” requires study.)

The other notion, that of letting the brain, not the throat, worry about pitch, I felt was extremely useful. When the student thinks, “Oh my God, the high note is coming!” the throat tightens, the tongue tightens, everything tightens. But if the brain negotiates pitch on its own and the students worry more about posizione and breathing, whether it’s a low C or a high C, an easy emission and fluid legato become possible. Mary practiced what she preached: If you were deaf and looked at her when she sang, you could barely tell if she were singing a low note or a high one. That is contrary to what many teachers teach about making a huge opening, in order to “let the sound out.” However, there is no biological reason why a mouth has to be open wide in order for the voice to be heard. Audibility and oral aperture are not directly proportional. If they were, ventriloquism would be a physiological impossibility.

Without my knowing it at the time, Mary’s focus on the vowels was very much in the Italian Belcanto tradition. Like Vittorio Marciano, she spent a good part of the lesson purifying her students’ vowels. She didn’t talk so much about physically shaping the lips, and she avoided any mumbo-jumbo about the tongue. Mary was a firm believer that if you could hear the correct vowel, you could sing the correct vowel. Also like Vittorio, she sang a lot during the lessons. How happy were my ears!

We discussed old-time singers quite often. She’d talk about hearing recitals by Gigli and Tauber in London, or singing Aïda with Helge Roswaenge. “He was about sixty at the time,” Mary remembered. “Amneris, of course, comes on the stage right after Celeste Aïda. He sang the aria so beautifully that when I came on, I almost couldn’t sing.”

Mary’s memories go back even further. “When I was born,” she said, “Caruso was still alive.” She was two when he died, but even into her youth he was “still very much talked about.” She had contemporary knowledge about things that I know only from books. Caruso’s interpretation of La Juive … Lawrence Tibbett’s divorce … I know about those things because I read about them. She knew about them because she heard them being talked about! I know the old recordings as CD re-releases. She owned the original 78s. This was the privilege it was to work on a weekly basis with such legends as Iride Pilla and Mary Davenport. And Mary, who as recently as today was forming five beautiful vowels, is living proof that the twilight of Belcanto has not become night.

The above from The Twilight of Belcanto (Copyright © MMIV, MMV Leonardo A. Ciampa. All rights reserved.)

Habemus Tenorem!

Friends,

Opera, for me, has been one of the most bittersweet areas of my life. Some of my happiest moments have been spent listening to Caruso, Gigli, and the great singers of the 1950s – the "Second Golden Age."

Some of my life's unhappiest moments have been spent listening to singers of today.

I won't bore you with a long diatribe on the descent of singing technique – I got that out of my system in The Twilight of Belcanto. And I simply became resigned that great singing was like an old black-and-white photo on the wall: something beautiful and grand that you can look at anytime you want, but no matter what you do, you cannot enter into that photo – or make the people in the photo come out.

You'll forgive me, then, if I'm reluctant to hear new tenors. I won't name names of the tenors whom everyone said was "the next great tenor." One had less technique than the other. All I need to say is: if Andrea Bocelli is engaged to sing opera, that fact in itself depicts the short supply of good tenors.

Tonight, January 2, 2010, I heard for the first time a young Polish tenor named Piotr Beczala. The aria was Tu che a Dio spiegasti l'ali from Lucia, a live recording from the October 15, 2008, Met broadcast, posted on YouTube. I have to say, I was reluctant to hear it – not only because people say he is "the next great tenor," but because that aria – like Celeste Aïda, like Dai campi, dai prati, is an aria that exposes any and all defects in technique.

Well, I listened.

I was not prepared for what I heard.

As much as I detest comparisons like, "the Russian Caruso," or, "the Norwegian Gigli," or, "the Zimbabwean Schipa," I have to say that the first few notes reminded me of – dare I say it? – Jussi Björling. Before that first phrase was over, before Beczala even got to l'ali, I already knew that I had stumbled upon a great tenor. I looked again at the YouTube description, to make sure it really was a live recording. Part of me couldn't believe it.

For the first time in my entire life, the way I felt listening to this man sing was the same way I feel listening to recordings of the great tenors of the past. When you hear Gedda in his prime, for instance, you feel yourself almost being caressed, not by the instrument itself – because lots of people walking the street were given beautiful instruments – but by the seamless technique that only years of serious study with a great teacher can produce. The same when you hear Gigli in his prime, or Jan Peerce in his prime, or Björling or any of those greats. Nothing Pavarotti or Domingo ever recorded gives me that feeling. A few recordings of Carreras do. (If you don't believe me, listen to his La dolcissima effigie from Tokyo, 1976.) Shicoff has done it (hear his Pourquoi me réveiller from Aix-de-Provence, 1979). But here's a young man, in the prime of life and of voice at this very moment, singing the way the gods did in the 1950s!

I had to hear something else, just to make sure it wasn't a fluke. I went to Beczala.com and downloaded Che gelida manina. Now I could see him as well as hear him. (The Lucia was audio only, with a still photo.) Again, the first couple of phrases recalled Björling, while the face – the natural smile and radiance – reminded me of Wunderlich. The clarity of his tones, linked by a faultless legato, were remarkable, giving the eerie impression not only that does he not crack, but that he cannot crack.

So, so many tenors were great but for only a few seasons. (Di Stefano's prime was no more than eight seasons.) There is something in Beczala's singing that tells me he is going to last. How could anyone who went through the trouble of learning to sing that beautifully ever choose the other pathway? If he continues to resist the temptations of bigger sounds and heavier repertoire – and I believe he's going to – I think it's safe to say: We have found the tenor!

Habemus Tenorem!

Photo of Mr. Beczala © Kurt Pinter

Tenor Extremes

Connoisseurs like to name Caruso, Gigli, and Schipa as their three tenors. For me, I need to regress even further. Alessandro Bonci, Fernando De Lucia, and Giuseppe Anselmi are the three tenors who take me back to an era where the worst singers sang better than the best singers of today. If that sounds like an extreme statement, you've evidently never heard Anselmi's 1907 recording of Quando le sere al placido, or De Lucia's 1904 Ecco ridente in cielo. This singing isn't just "a little bit better" than the singing on today's stage. It's the difference between Coq au Vin and chicken nuggets.

Last week I happened to hear Anselmi sing Tosti's once-famous song Vorrei (a recording I'd forgotten I had). Perfect vowels, perfectly coordinated with long, effortless breaths -- this is singing of a world other than ours (a nicer one).

I was broken from this spell today by a friend who e-mailed me a YouTube clip of one Stephen Costello, singing Tombe agl'avi miei. I was curious about this tenor who, someone claimed, recalls the "Golden Age." To me, it recalled something from the Bronze Age. The notes above the passaggio were wide open and scooped up to in José-Cura-esque fashion. How do singers like this find their way onto major operatic stages? And the answer is: because there's no one else.

Teaching voice is like building a Neogothic cathedral. The technology is out there, somewhere. And there must be people out there, somewhere, who know that technology. But good luck finding them. Good luck finding someone who could do what the architects of Ste. Clotilde in Paris did in the 1850s. And good luck finding a voice teacher who teaches something that bears even a passing resemblance to voice technique. One more generation of this and the singing industry is going to be like the washboard manufacturing industry.

And yet people ask me, "Why don't you go to the Met?" Because the singing is so horrible that if the very best singer at the Met called you on the telephone, the feet of the birds perched on the telephone wires would itch.

Paderewski plays Chopin's Mazurkas

About a month ago I was talking to Dr. Joseph Maneri. We agreed that Chopin was one of the most original composers who ever lived.

Not that that is the only benchmark. Many Brahms pieces sound like Schumann, Schubert, or Beethoven. Bach and Handel imitated everyone. So that is not the only criterion.

However, it's remarkable how little of Chopin sounds like anybody else. A critic once wrote shallowly that the Chopin Nocturne was "a Bellini melody over a John Field bass." Chopin sounds nothing like Bellini or John Field. In fact, Chopin completed both sets of etudes and both concerti by age 20. No other composer, not even Mozart, wrote music that was as original, plentiful, and good by age 20.

But how does one play Chopin? What should his music sound like?

And what about those Mazurkas?

Chopin died in 1849. His last students were dead before pianists started making 78 records. In short, we have no aural evidence of anyone who ever heard Chopin play.

Ten or fifteen years ago, I was on a mission: to figure out how to play Chopin's divine Mazurkas. I bought every recording I could find made by a Polish pianist born before 1900.

I did conclude that only the Poles can play that rhythm. But even among them, there was much variety. Rosenthal's sharp rhythm was more Rosenthalian then Chopinesque. At the opposite end of the spectrum was Arthur Rubinstein, whose rhythm was watered down enough not to offend or confuse the non-Poles.

But then you have Paderewski ...

Pederewski was and is a difficult musician to adjudge. Today the most famous musicians are the ones with the most skillful and aggressive managers. 75 or 100 years ago, the most famous musicians were the greatest by the common consent of their colleagues. Singers agreed that Caruso and Gigli were the greatest. String players agreed that Kreisler and Heifetz were the greatest.

No one agreed about Paderewski.

His pianist-colleagues were unanimous: he stunk. The public was unanimous: he was the greatest pianist in the world. Never the twain did meet.

Was it "A" or "B"? The answer is: "Yes."

That he was the most famous no one questions. Liberace in his prime created nothing like the Paderewski frenzy. Women would rush the stage to touch Paderewski -- and not all of them were paid to do so. In the era between Franz Liszt and Elvis Presley, Paderewski was the world's most hysterically adulated musician (pace Caruso).

Nor does anyone question that Paderewski had his technical defects at the keyboard. He didn't start lessons till age 12. Only by age 24 did he find a great teacher, Leschetitzky. Paderewski tried to compensate by practicing like a fiend -- up to 17 (!) hours a day for certain events. Then one day (so the rumor goes), something in his hand "snapped" during a concert. (A tendon?) He finished the performance anyway. His playing was never the same since.

But forget all that. Forget the hysterical fans. Forget the faulty technique. Just LISTEN.

Listen to Paderewski play Chopin. Who else had that nobility? Or that melting lyricism? Or that golden tone that comes through even the crackly 78s? And who could imbue this music with more patriotism than the future Prime Minister of Poland?

Paderewski was accused of infidelity to the printed score. Yet his Chopin was more Chopinesque than Rosenthal's, Friedman's, Rubinstein's, or that of most any other Pole.

I am grateful that Paderewski recorded much Chopin, including the Mazurkas. His rendering of the Mazurkas in Ab and F# minor from Op. 59 will perhaps never be surpassed.