# The Voice of Firestone: The Great Tenors (1950–1963)



## Barelytenor (Nov 19, 2011)

I spent an hour listening to these "great" tenors from my childhood, but some were greater than others. So far I am still totally enamored of Jussi Björling's voice. His natural sound is so plush and unforced, his legato perfect. Tagliavini just leaves me cold. I think Jan Peerce is the first tenor whose voice I ever recall hearing, and I still like his baritonal sound, even though the songs and his interpretations of them do little to promote him here (maybe when I was a child I was less critical, em?). The great Lauritz Melchior sounds very weird singing an English love song, and his aria from Lohengrin, while impressive, sounds a bit tired or strenuous vocally (surprising for him, as he is normally indefatigable to my ears; and admittedly the "In fernem Land" has a murderous tessitura). Nonetheless Melchior sounds wonderful in comparison to Jess Thomas, who has no apparent idea of legato in either German (the more-murderous "Prize Song" from Meistersinger) or Italian "Cielo e mar". Next up is Nicolai Gedda, who makes it all sound just so easy and provides ample lessons in French, Italian, and legato singing (although his bright lyric sound is so far forward, but it works for him).

I haven't yet finished the hourlong clip and have yet to hear Tucker, Corelli (bound to be a treat there), or James McCracken. Not sure my opinions count for any more than anyone else's, but this collection just proves to me once again that it is not age of a singer or the age of a clip that determines greatness. Some of these are pretty mediocre, and I can say most of these performers have had better days than the ones shown here (we are all human and have good days and bad).

I remember singing at Dallas Opera when Richard Tucker and Lucine Amara were singing Luisa Miller. When Tucker would sing a high note, he would actually_ leap _into the air on the release. Never saw that before or since.

I'd be interested to hear others' opinions. I thought you would enjoy these. Some of them. :lol:

Happy New Year BTW to you all!

Kind regards, :tiphat:

George


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

They couldn't have done better than to begin and end with Bjorling, probably the nearest thing to a perfect tenor who ever lived.

The only performance that gave me (almost) no pleasure was McCracken as Otello. I simply dislike his skull-rattling vibrato. Unlike you, I find Melchior singing "Because" a delight: he has such fervor, and the way he takes a high note at what you think is full strength and then opens it out makes my hair stand on end.

These are great voices from over half a century ago, showing us what real vocal technique sounds like. It's moving and sobering.


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## aussiebushman (Apr 21, 2018)

A point of interest for me is the singer's ability to sing in the "Italianate" versus the "Germanic" singing styles. As you both infer, reactions can be largely subjective but no dispute from about Bjorling. Despite his apparent laziness about language, the voice is nothing short of magnificent, regardless of what he is singing.

A few tenors have managed to handle both talian and German works with ease. One significant example, although performing/recording almost exclusively in German, please consider Franz Volker as worthy of addition to your selection.

1928 recording of O Lola from Cavalleria Rusticana *



* sung in German of course

In fernem land * 



*


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Ahh! What fun. I adored Bjoerling's "Vesti la giubba." He didn't overact and it was much more effective.
Unlike Woodduck, I got chills from McCracken's Otello. Yes, he's over the top but incredibly exciting. 
Corelli? Just staring at him is enough for me. 
Cornball Tucker had the goods. What a magnificent voice! I just wish he had toned down his annoying sobs.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

nina foresti said:


> Cornball Tucker had the goods. What a magnificent voice! I just wish he had toned down his annoying sobs.


Beng both a Jewish cantor and a singer of Italian opera, Tucker learned to sob in two languages. But I agree with you.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Thanks for this, George. Just started off with the Bjorling Flower Song - what a voice! I have him singing the pearl fishes duet as well with Merrill and it must be the most beautiful singing ever recorded. Pity he wrecked himself with the booze . I look forward to hearing the rest. I’m glad you said these guys had good days and bad days like singers today. Corelli of course had everything - looks and voice. He looked like a Hollywood star and could sing like a great tenor - and knew it! . I think it was Harold Schoenberg who tells the story of how he had a tiff with one of baritone and refused to work with him any more. Even though it was Correlli’s fault the poor baritone had to be fired. You can get any number of baritones but there was only one Correlli people wanted to hear!


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

David:
Are you saying that Corelli had such clout that the baritone was fired from the Metropolitan Opera Company or just from the particular production they were starring in together?
Also, to make such a startling statement kind of deserves the right to print the baritone's name.


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## Barelytenor (Nov 19, 2011)

DavidA said:


> Thanks for this, George. Just started off with the Bjorling Flower Song - what a voice! I have him singing the pearl fishes duet as well with Merrill and it must be the most beautiful singing ever recorded. Pity he wrecked himself with the booze . ...


I couldn't agree more ... he shortened his life dramatically with the alcohol, although he also had arrhythmia and at least one heart attack. His father before him also had a drinking problem. Although I can't lay my hands on it now, I remember reading of some record-producer/compère of Björling who successfully prevented him from stopping in for a drink. This was before recording what is IMHO the best Verdi Requiem version ever, with Leontyne Price, Rosalind Elias, Giorgio Tozzi, and the Vienna Philharmonic under Fritz Reiner. The most incredible "Ingemisco" and Björling sings it the way Verdi wrote it, with a _forte _top B-flat, then descending a fifth to the tonic E-flat, _fortissimo._

And Woodduck we totally agree on this tenor!

Kind regards, :tiphat:

George


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> They couldn't have done better than to begin and end with Bjorling, probably the nearest thing to a perfect tenor who ever lived.
> 
> The only performance that gave me (almost) no pleasure was McCracken as Otello. I simply dislike his skull-rattling vibrato. Unlike you, I find Melchior singing "Because" a delight: he has such fervor, and the way he takes a high note at what you think is full strength and then opens it out makes my hair stand on end.
> 
> These are great voices from over half a century ago, showing us what real vocal technique sounds like. It's moving and sobering.


back when we had true spinto and dramatic tenors because they weren't pushed down into "lyric baritone"


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## Barelytenor (Nov 19, 2011)

I think if anything the opposite is true ... no aspiring male professional singer wants to get "pushed down" into a lower-paying fach. There are a lot of "pushed-up" baritones trotting around the world. I always wanted to be a tenor, but listening and being true to my own voice informed me that I was a lyric baritone.

Voice teacher 1 (age 18): You're a spinto tenor.
Voice teacher 2 (age 20): You're a heldentenor.
Voice teacher 3 (age 22): Stand here and pretend your chest is hooked to the ceiling and breathe for 3 months. (I lasted six weeks with her.)
Voice teacher 4: "God, what a voice" (I had found my true voice after graduating and was singing Escamillo, age 24.)
Voice teacher 5: You're not a tenor (age 25). I stayed with her for 10 years.
The Met (age 30+): You're too old, you'll never make it.
Voice teacher 6 (age 67): You need to find a company and sing Rigoletto. Uh, thanks for the compliment, but no thanks.

Kind regards, :tiphat:

George


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I was meandering around YouTube and chanced upon some more Voice of Firestone, this time over half an hour devoted to Lauritz Melchior. I thought I'd listen to just a bit of it but was soon hooked and had to sit through the whole thing. At a certain point I just found myself grinning and my eyes getting moist. What a jolly giant he was, always pouring it on with a full heart and a twinkle in his eye! Near the end of it I remembered that he was born in 1890, and that in these performances from 1950 and 1951 he was aged sixty or sixty-one years. Of course that means that that amazing voice was also sixty or sixty-one years old, almost unchanged since his debut in 1917, and after having sung the heaviest roles in opera hundreds of times.






It's tempting to say that they don't make 'em like that any more, but I guess they never did.


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## Barelytenor (Nov 19, 2011)

Not to take away a thing from Melchior's wonderful artistry ... but it did strike me how excellent his low notes were (as well as his high notes), including what I think (I didn't check) was a low Bb during the intro to Spring in Vienna. But when he started the Prize Song from Meistersinger, I had to find out. That is a song that truly separates the heldentenors from the high baritones ... and even the heldentenors had better be _on,_ to get all the way through Meistersinger to the last act, and then still have the juice to sing that brutally high tessitura. The song is pitched in C major, starting on E, the third of the chord. It rises many times to the G dominant and there are a couple of quick high A's in the melody before the climactic high A, held for several measures.

This high baritone (moi) can still sing "Winterstürme wichen den Wonnemond" in key as written with no problem. But I quit, many years ago, trying to struggle through the Prize Song, which basically has many of the same melodic contours but is simply pitched up a step. When I saw Ben Heppner sing it at the Met around 2000 with James Morris and Karita Mattila, he was going through a really bad vocal patch. I think many in the audience knew (heard) that there was simply no way he was going to make that high note. Savvy singer that he is, he didn't try, instead just singing it down the octave. But it is definitely among the Climax to End All Climaxes ... so to speak ... well, vocally, anyway. :lol: I was really tempted (I resisted) to supply the missing high A from the audience (sure, it's easy for lots of baritones when you don't have to get through the song that precedes it).

Anyway. Sure enough, Melchior himself takes it down a step, singing it in B flat rather than C. As Woodduck points out, he is a man in his later career, 50s or 60s, and I suspect he very much wants to Have a Good Time singing on a gig such as the Voice of Firestone. And few people know the difference, or care. But he still sounds fantastic (although I enjoy his sung German a lot more than his sung English).

Kind regards, :tiphat:

George


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

^^^ Melchior loved to sing the Prize Song in concert, and he's a participant in that marvelous group of excerpts from _Meistersinger _recorded with Friedrich Schorr and Elisabeth Schumann in 1928 (I think), but he declined to sing Walther in the theater, saying that the role kept him too high too much of the time. He had all the high notes but felt more comfortable when he could move frequently throughout his range. Most of the Wagner tenor parts allowed him to do that. I got a kick out of him doing the steersman's song from The Flying Dutchman, a part I doubt any theater would have wasted him on.

Anyone with doubts about his high C only needs to listen to this Siegfried sing-off:


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