MICHELE MOLESE, Tenor * 29 August 1928, New York, New York + died 5 July 1989,Broni, Italy;

He first studied in his hometown New York, then at the Conservatory of Milan with Emilio Piccoli and Francesco Merli, and debuted in 1956 at the Teatro Nuovo Milan as Beppe. “L’Amico Fritz” at Piccola Scala the same year. in Milan as the title hero in “Amico Fritz” of Mascagni. He success in Europe; singing at Milan’s Scala, the operas of Amsterdam, Brussels, Budapest, Prague and Sofia, at Monte Carlo, Bologna, Naples, Palermo, Turin, and at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. In 1963 he performed at the Opéra-Comique in the premiere of the opera “Le dernier Sauvage” by Gian Carlo Menotti. Werther, Hoffmann, Alfredo Des Grieux, and Manrico too.

 

HELGE ROSVAENGE, Tenor * 29 August 1897, Copenhagen, Denmark + 19 June 1972, Munich, Germany;’

Opera singer. Considered one of the most popular tenors of the 20th century, he was known as “The Knight of the High D”. Born Helge Anton Rosenvinge Hansen in Copenhagen, he was largely a self-taught vocalist, combining his few lessons with listening to records of Enrico Caruso. After his debut as Don Jose in 1921, and engagements in Germany and Switzerland, he was engaged by the Berlin State Opera where he was the leading tenor from 1930 to 1944. In 1934 and 1936 he sang Parcifal at Bayreuth and in 1938 Florestan in “Fidelio” at the Royal Opera House in London. From 1948 he was engaged by the Vienna State Opera. He was frequently heard on the radio, appeared in a few films, and made numerous recordings. He also wrote his memoirs, entitled “Leche Bajazzo”. After a tour of the USA he gave his farewell concert in Vienna in 1959. (bio by: Erik Skytte)

 

GRÉ BROUWENSTIJN, Soprano * 26 August 1915, Den Helder, Netherlands + 14 December 1999, Amsterdam, Netherlands;

She studied at the Amsterdam Muzieklyceum with Jaap Stroomenbergh, then with Boris Pelsky and Ruth Horna. Her debut was in 1940 as one of the three ladies in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte” in Amsterdam. During the Second World War, she was mainly a concert singer, and in 1946 joined the newly formed Netherlands Opera as Giulietta in “Les Contes d’Hoffmann”, followed by Tosca and Santuzza and above all Leonore in “Fidelio” in 1949.. At the Holland Festival in 1950 she sang Rezia Covent Garden’s Aid in 1951. The Trovatore and Forza Leonoras Amelia, Desdemona, Donna Anna, the Countess, and Iphigénie. Chrysotemis and the Marschallin too.. At Bayreuth Elisabeth, Eva, Sieglinde, Freia and Gutrune. Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Jenufa in 1959. She took leave of the stage in Amsterdam in 1971 as Leonore .

Photo courtesy: Charles Rhodes

 

 

 

IRMA BEILKE, Soprano * 24 August 1904, Berlin, Germany + 20 December 1989, Berlin, Germany;

She received her musical training in Berlin from HT Dreyer and Gertrud Wirthschaft. She had her debut in 1926 at the Municipal Opera in Berlin as a bridesmaid in “Der Freischuetz”. Blondchen at Glyndebourne in 1936. Sophie, Marzelline, Papagena and Blondchen at Covent Garden . The Salburg Festival’s Pamina in 1946, and the same year, at the Berlin Staatsoper she sang Colombine in Busoni’s “Arlecchino”. Susanna, Despina, Massenet’s Manon, Norina, Violetta, Oscar, Gilda, the Forest Bird, Frau Fluth. Lortzing’s Undine,and Marie in Smetana’s “Verkaufe Braut” in addition to roles in “Amelia al ballo” by Menotti and ‘Mathis der Maler’ by Hindemith.

 

RAFFAELE ARIÉ, Bass * 22 August 1920, Sofia + 17 March 1988, Switzerland;

Raffaele Arié (22 August 1920, Sofia – 17 March 1988, Switzerland) was a Bulgarian bass, particularly associated with the Italian and Russian repertories.

Arié studied first in his native city with C. Brambaroff, making his stage debut at the Sofia Opera in 1945. He then left for Italy to further his studies, and was a pupil of Riccardo Stracciari, Apollo Granforte and Carlo Tagliabue. He made his debut at La Scala in 1946, as the King in The Love for Three Oranges.

He sang widely in Italy, creating in Venice, the role of Trulove in The Rake’s Progress in 1951. He also appeared at the Vienna State Opera, the Salzburg Festival, the Paris Opéra, and the Aix-en-Provence Festival.

His roles included; Osmin, Commendatore, Sarastro, Méphistopheles, Varlaam, etc. He was especially admired as Fiesco, as both Filippo and Il grand Inquisitore in Don Carlo, and as Boris Godunov.

Arié possessed a deep, easily produced and fine-textured voice, he can be heard on record, as Raimondo in Lucia di Lammermoor, opposite Maria Callas, Giuseppe di Stefano, Tito Gobbi, under Tullio Serafin.

 

EDWARD JOHNSON, Tenor * 22 August 1878, Guelph, Ontario, Canada + 20 April 1959, Guelph, Ontario, Canada;

The father of the Canadian tenor and impresario, Edward Johnson (Edoardo di Giovanni), hoped he would become a lawyer, but in 1899 he went to New York to study music.

In 1902 Edward Johnson was the hero in De Koven’s Maid Marian in Boston, and he starred on Broadway in 1908 in Straus’s A Waltz Dream. On Caruso’s advice he went to Florence in 1909 to work with Vincenzo Lombardi. As Edoardo di Giovanni he made his operatic debut in 1912 in Padua in Andrea Chenier. He sang in premieres of works by Pizzetti and Alfano, in Parsifal in Italian, making his La Scala debut in 1914, and in the Italian premieres of Puccini’s Il tabarro and Gianni Schicchi (1919, Rome).

Edward Johnson left Italy to become the leading tenor of the Chicago Opera from 1919 to 1922, making his debut there as Loris in Fedora. Following that enagement he was the leading tenor of the Metropolitan Opera in New York from 1922 to 1935, making his debut as Avito in L’amore dei tre re. He was favourite there as Pelleas, Romeo and Peter Ibbetson, a role he created in the Deems Taylor opera. Also in his repertory were Siegfried and Faust, a role he sang at Covent Garden in 1923.

Edward Johnson’s musicianship, romantic appearance and ability to project a character were coupled with a lyric voice of good quality and range, a sound technique and a seldom-used but easy high E. He followed Herbert Witherspoon, Gatti-Casazza’s successor, as general manager of the Metropolitan from 1935 to 1950, successfully guiding the company through the war period.

Courtesy: Bach Cantatas Website & Collection Canada

 

GISELA SCHRÖTER, Mezzo-soprano * 19 August 1928, Sardehnen, Ostpreußen † 5 November 2011 in Leipzig;

She studied at the Berlin Conservatory with Jean Nadolovitch, and had .advanced training at the opera studio of the Dresden Staatsoper with Rudolf Dittrich. She debuted there in 1957 as a page in “Lohengrin”. In 1959 at Bayreuth she sang one of the flower girls in “Parsifal”. In 1964 she joined the Staatsoper Berlin where her repertoire included Carmen, Octavian, and the Composer in “Ariadne auf Naxos”. In 1973 she participated in the premiere of “Reiter in der Nacht” by Ernst Hermann Meyer. Sieglinde, The Nurse in “Die Frau Ohne Schatten”, Herodias, Marie in ” Wozzeck ” and the old Buryja in “Jenufa” also.

Gisela Schröter als Octavian in Strauss’ “Rosenkavalier” 1961 an der Dresdner Staatsoper.

 

JOHAN BOTHA, Tenor * 19 August 1965, Rustenburg, South Africa + 8 September 2016, Vienna, Austria;

Johan Botha, the South African tenor who has died of cancer aged 51, was one of the largest characters – in stature, voice and personality – on the international opera stage. He was at his finest in Wagner’s great heldentenor roles – Lohengrin, Tannhäuser and Siegmund – but he could equally well turn his Pavarotti-size bulk to the tenor roles of Mozart, Puccini and Verdi.

He made his Covent Garden debut in 1995 as Rodolfo in La Bohème conducted by Simone Young; two years later he was described by The New York Times as “a first-rate new tenor” when he sang at the Metropolitan Opera in Il Pagliacci, also conducted by Young, the first of some 81 appearances that he made there.

Soon Botha was singing Wagner at both houses, including the title role in Tannhäuser at Covent Garden in 2010 with Eva-Maria Westbroek conducted by Semyon Bychkov. The Daily Telegraph’s Rupert Christiansen was unconvinced by the tenor’s physique, but declared him to be “that rare thing, a true Wagnerian tenor, and his Tannhäuser was marked by clarion tone, firm intonation and the stamina to make the character’s final remorse urgent, rather than merely exhausted”.

Had Botha been a female opera singer there would no doubt have been much greater discussion about his considerable girth. Some did indeed find him implausible, with Igor Toronyi-Lalic on The Arts Desk website writing that he “might as well have been a stuffed bear on wheels”. The singer himself insisted that he had tried to tackle his size. “I’ve done every diet you can think of,” he said, adding that he was hurt by suggestions that he was not believable as an on-stage lover. “I sing like one,” he insisted.

Johan Botha was born into a farming community in Derby, 80 miles west of Johannesburg, on August 19 1965, the son of a postmaster and his postmistress wife. “I grew up among the mail bags,” he said. His parents, encouraged by their minister at the family’s Dutch Reformed Church, found him singing lessons with a Czech refugee. The young Johan had a glorious voice and was comfortably able to reach the highest notes in Mozart’s Queen of the Night aria (“to annoy everybody”). The family later moved north to Rustenburg, where his father found work at a chrome mine and Johan was able to continue his education without being sent to boarding school.

His two years’ military service (1983-84) were spent in the Canaries, the choir of the South African Air Force, where he also played percussion and guitar in a military jazz band. He was not immune from the horrors of military life and afterwards needed therapy. He then joined the Pretoria Technikon opera school, where his first role was as Sir John in Verdi’s Falstaff. He started as a bass-baritone, “but then in 1986 or 1987 my voice suddenly started moving up into a higher register,” he told Opera magazine in 2010, explaining how he was having difficulty reaching down to the low notes. “You are a bloody tenor,” he recalled Eric Muller, his teacher, telling him. “You’re going to be one of the best Wagner tenors in the world.”

His professional debut was as Max in Weber’s Der Freischütz in Johannesburg in 1989. He was heard by Norbert Balatsch, chorus master at Bayreuth, who invited him to join the Wagner chorus the following summer. That was followed by a handful of seasons at smaller German opera houses, but his big breakthrough came when he stepped in to sing Pinkerton in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly at the Bastille in Paris in 1993 – learning the Italian part in two days. “Within two weeks I had signed contracts with Covent Garden, the Met, Vienna Volksoper and Berlin Opera,” he recalled.

By now he was living in Vienna and eventually he took Austrian citizenship; in 2003 he was appointed Kammersänger by the Vienna State Opera, the youngest singer to be granted the honour. In 2009 he suffered a fall leaving the stage at the end of the first act as Radames in Aida at the Met (a production in which Daniele Gatti, the conductor, was greeted with boos for being too restrained). He returned to Bayreuth the following year but now, instead of being an anonymous member of the chorus, he was Siegmund in Die Walküre.

On one occasion in 2012 he had been enjoying several beers in Schwarzenbergplatz in Vienna and had just returned home when the Musikverein telephoned to say that they needed a substitute within the hour for a performance with Zubin Mehta of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, a work he had not sung for six years. The concert was by all accounts a triumph, though he recalled that it “seemed like being in a trance”.

Although he returned regularly to South Africa, Botha regretted not being asked to sing there more often. “Culture is culture,” he said, “it’s not European, so why shouldn’t South Africa do opera in its own way?” He also called for more translation of opera into “the black languages”, adding: “Zulu vowels are round, and work in Italian music.”

Botha was a deeply religious man who sought out a church wherever he was singing. He once listed the major milestones in his career as being Bayreuth, the Bastille, the Met and Covent Garden, but added: “The biggest milestone for me is to make people happy and smile.”

He is survived by his wife, Sonja, whom he married in 1992, and by their two sons.

Johan Botha, born August 19 1965, died September 8 2016

Courtesy: The Telegraph   

 

BARRY BUSSE, Tenor * 18 August 1946 Mechanicsburg Cumberland County Pennsylvania, USA + 15 May 2017 Carrollton Carroll County Ohio, USA;

Opera Singer. A baritone-turned-tenor, he shall be remembered for performing in the world’s principal venues over a three decade career. Raised in central Pennsylvania, he graduated from Oberlin College, received a master’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music, and later earned a master’s in education from Walsh University. Initially a baritone, he received a George London Award, but converted to tenor during his time at Radio City Music Hall. Over the years his repertoire encompassed a number of ‘heavyweight’ tenor roles, among then Don Jose in Bizet’s “Carmen”, the painter Mario Cavaradossi from Puccini’s “Tosca”, the tragic clown Canio in Leoncavallo’s “I Pagliacci”, Des Grieux of Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut”, both Boris and Tichon in Leos Janeck’s “Katya Kabanova”, Siegmund from Wagner’s “Die Walkure”, both Herod and Naraboth in Richard Strauss “Salome”, and the title lead of Wagner’s “Parsifal”. Mr. Busse was also heard in more modern pieces, singing, among other works, the title lead of David Lang’s “Nosferatu”, the Foreman in the same composer’s “Modern Painters”, the Shoe Salesman of Argento’s “Postcard from Morocco”, and Alwa from Alban Berg’s “Lulu”. Among the theaters at which he received high marks were the New York City Opera, the San Francisco Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Teatro La Fenice of Venice, Opera Toulouse, Opera Santa Fe, and the Seattle Opera. In retirement he founded the Opera Ohio Theatre as a venue for young singers and new ventures, ran a private chef company, was a master cabinet maker, served as a volunteer voice and dramatic coach at local high schools, and was a choir member and soloist of St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church of Massillon. At his demise he could be heard on live recordings of some of his performances. (bio by: Bob Hufford)

 

LEO SLEZAK, Tenor * 18 August 1873, Šumperk, Czech Republic + 1 June 1946, Rottach-Egern, Germany;

Leo Slezak, (born Aug. 18, 1873, Šumperk, Austria-Hungary [now in Czech Republic]—died June 1, 1946, Egern, W.Ger.), Austrian opera singer and film comedian, known for his performances of Wagnerian operatic roles.

Slezak made his debut at Brno (now in Czech Republic) in Lohengrin in 1896. By 1909 he had established his reputation in London and New York City as a heroic tenor in the part of Othello, and he won further esteem for his Wagnerian interpretations. In later years he abandoned singing and became known as a film comedian in Austria.

Austrian opera singer Leo Slezak touring in a car.

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