Bruce Steane Vidéos
compositeur ou compositrice, organiste
- orgue
- Angleterre
Dernière mise à jour
2024-05-09
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William Heddle Nash Verdi Steane Enrico Caruso Giuseppe Borgatti Carcano Rossini Ferrando Joan Hammond Sir Edward Elgar Scala Covent Garden Three Choirs Festival British National Opera Company Carl Rosa Opera Company 1894 1923 1924 1925 1926 1929 1930 1931 1932 1934 1937 1938 1948 1950 1958 1961 1994
Heddle Nash sings 'Questa o quella' (in English as 'In my heart, all are equally cherished,') with orchestra conducted by Clarence Raybould, recorded on 4 April 1932. I hear a little 'bird' intrude in the introduction! From Wikipedia: William Heddle Nash (14 June 1894 – 14 August 1961) was an English lyric tenor who appeared in opera and oratorio. He made numerous recordings that are still available on CD reissues. Nash's voice was of the light tenor class known as 'tenore di grazia.' The critic J. B. Steane referred to him as 'the English lyric tenor par excellence, without equal then or now...' Nash was born in the South London district of Deptford on 14 June 1894... The family was musical, and listening at home to a gramophone record by Enrico Caruso prompted Nash to apply for a scholarship at the Blackheath Conservatoire of Music. He was accepted, but a week later World War I broke out. Nash joined the army, serving in France, Salonika, Egypt and Palestine. The Blackheath scholarship was held open until after the war; Nash took it up on his return. He had some experience of concert and oratorio work, and then he accepted an offer to sing with Podrecca and Feodora's Italian Marionettes. Unseen, standing in the orchestra pit of the Scala and Coliseum theatres, he sang the tenor roles in many Italian operas while on the stages the puppets mimed the action. After the London season, the marionette company secured a contract to appear in New York; Nash went with them. On his return to London a friend advanced the money for him to study in Milan with Giuseppe Borgatti. On 7 April 1923 Nash married Florence Emily Violet Pearce, daughter of a sign manufacturer. They had two sons, John Dennis Heddle Nash +••.••(...)), who became an operatic baritone, and David L Heddle Nash (b. 1930). While studying with Borgatti, Nash made his operatic debut in 1924 at the Teatro Carcano in Milan, when he replaced an indisposed tenor in the role of Almaviva in Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia. It was a notable success. After singing at Turin, Bologna and Genoa, Nash returned to England with his wife in 1925. He had developed an Italianate style of singing that remained with him: it was said of him that he sang everything as though it were by Verdi. On his return to London Nash was engaged by the Old Vic Company under Lilian Baylis to sing tenor roles in English. Success was instantaneous. The Musical Times said that it was a pleasure to welcome a very beautiful tenor voice, praised his clarity of diction, and predicted that Nash would be one of the eminent lyric tenors of the future... At the end of the Old Vic season he joined the British National Opera Company, going on tour with the company after a short London season... In 1929, Nash made his debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden... He sang leading tenor roles in Italian and French operas at Covent Garden until World War II... The critic Alan Blyth called Nash the leading British lyric tenor of the 20th century, and considered him 'ideal casting for the heroes of French 19th-century Romantic opera.' Nash had a repertoire of twenty-four operas, and sang fluently in English, French, German and Italian. He was proud of being the first Englishman to sing David in Die Meistersinger in the International Season at Covent Garden. In the first Glyndebourne season, in 1934, Nash played Basilio in Le Nozze di Figaro at the inaugural performance, Pedrillo, and Ferrando in Così fan Tutte. He sang these three roles every year until 1938, adding Ottavio in Don Giovanni in 1937. The critic Richard Capell wrote, 'Hardly another tenor of his time has sung Mozart with such elegance and at the same time such a minstrel-like effect of spontaneity.' Nash also sang in lighter musical stage works... During the war Nash toured with the Carl Rosa Opera Company, often singing opposite the Australian soprano Joan Hammond... His last appearance at Covent Garden was in Die Meistersinger in April 1948. He continued to appear on stage until July 1958... Nash's career was not restricted to opera; he gave many song recitals, made radio broadcasts and performed in concerts and oratorio productions all over Britain. In 1931, he was chosen by Sir Edward Elgar to sing the title role in The Dream of Gerontius, in a performance conducted by Elgar himself. Henceforth, Nash was closely associated with the part, singing it at every Three Choirs Festival from 1934 to 1950... Nash sang regularly in Messiah, and other oratorios... In his later years, Nash was appointed professor of singing at the Royal College of Music. He sang in his last Messiah a few months before his death from lung cancer on 14 August 1961. On his tombstone in Chislehurst Cemetery are carved the opening words of part two of The Dream of Gerontius: 'I went to sleep and now I am refreshed...'' I transferred this side from Australian Columbia DO 863.
Joseph Hislop Coates Kahn Hayward Sharpe Steane Covent Garden 1884 1914 1920 1927 1934 1937 1977
'Bird Songs at Eventide' was recorded on 14 June 1927, with piano by Percy Kahn, violin by Marjorie Hayward and 'cello by Cedric Sharpe. It is difficult to improve upon John Steane's appreciation of the art of Joseph Hislop. 'He is a singer for whose ways and means one comes to have much affection, partly through the interaction of opera and song,' wrote Steane in 'The Grand Tradition.' As regards his records of Scottish songs and English ballads, Steane spoke of Hislop's 'tender and restrained way...varying his tone from a clear, incisive ring to a gentle mezzo voce, veiled and floated with fine control. In relation to the operatic recordings, Steane was a little less enthusiastic, but only a little. Michael Scott certainly found his singing to be clean and vigorous, with everything 'done to a high degree of competence.' Hislop was born in Edinburgh on 5 April 1884. He gained a musical education as a choirboy, but initially pursued a career in photoengraving. Ultimately, photography was jettisoned in favour of singing studies - in Stockholm, where he made his debut in 1914. He made his Covent Garden and North American debuts in 1920, and continued to sing in opera until 1934. He also made many concert tours, including to Australia. Retiring from singing in 1937, he began a teaching career in Stockholm, later continuing it in England. He died in Fife, Scotland, on 6 May 1977.
Joseph Hislop Gounod Byng Hayward Steane Covent Garden 1884 1914 1920 1926 1934 1937 1977
'Salut, demeure' was recorded on 9 June 1926, with orchestra conducted by George Byng and violin by Marjorie Hayward. It is difficult to improve upon John Steane's appreciation of the art of Joseph Hislop. 'He is a singer for whose ways and means one comes to have much affection, partly through the interaction of opera and song,' wrote Steane in 'The Grand Tradition.' As regards his records of Scottish songs and English ballads, Steane spoke of Hislop's 'tender and restrained way...varying his tone from a clear, incisive ring to a gentle mezzo voce, veiled and floated with fine control. In relation to the operatic recordings, Steane was a little less enthusiastic, but only a little. Michael Scott certainly found his singing to be clean and vigorous, with everything 'done to a high degree of competence.' Hislop was born in Edinburgh on 5 April 1884. He gained a musical education as a choirboy, but initially pursued a career in photoengraving. Ultimately, photography was jettisoned in favour of singing studies - in Stockholm, where he made his debut in 1914. He made his Covent Garden and North American debuts in 1920, and continued to sing in opera until 1934. He also made many concert tours, including to Australia. Retiring from singing in 1937, he began a teaching career in Stockholm, later continuing it in England. He died in Fife, Scotland, on 6 May 1977.
Frank Mullings Leoncavallo Sir Thomas Beecham Gounod Verdi Isidore Lara Rutland Boughton Berlioz Steane Elsa Stralia Beecham Opera Company British National Opera Company Covent Garden 1881 1907 1913 1916 1919 1921 1922 1925 1927 1929 1944 1946 1949 1953 1971 1979 2006
English Tenor Frank Mullings +••.••(...)) On With The Motley / Pagliacci (Leoncavallo) Prize Song / Meistersinger (Wagner) Recorded: 1925 (?) / Frank Mullings (born in Walsall on 10 March 1881 / died in Manchester on 19 May 1953) was a leading English tenor with Sir Thomas Beecham's Beecham Opera Company and its successor, the British National Opera Company, during the 1910s and 1920s. Blessed with a strong stage presence but possessing a far from bel canto technique, and despite a placing of the voice which was generally unbearably excrutiating to the ear, his repertoire included such taxing dramatic parts as Tristan in Tristan und Isolde, Radames in Aida, the title role in Otello, and Canio in Pagliacci. The young Mullings studied singing in Birmingham and made his operatic début in Coventry in 1907—in Faust by Gounod. He joined the Denhof Opera Company in 1913, was engaged by the Beecham Opera Company from 1916 to 1921, and was with the British National Opera Company from 1922 until its closure in 1929. He was the first to sing the part of Wagner's Parsifal in English, which he did at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 1919. Mullings was a noted interpreter, in England at least, of Verdi's Otello, as well as Tristan by Wagner. He created the role of Hadyar in Nail by Isidore de Lara, and the role of Apollo in Alkestis by Rutland Boughton. The English music critic Neville Cardus, who came to know Mullings well, wrote in one of his press reviews that: "Mr. Mullings acted Canio in Pagliacci far beyond the plane of conventional Italian opera of the blood and sand order. His singing is not exactly all honey, but how intensely he lived in the part! He almost persuades us that there is real tragedy about / that if the puppet Canio were pricked, blood and not sawdust would come forth." On the other hand, the historian John Cawte Beaglehole, who as a young man in London saw Mullings perform in The Damnation of Faust by Berlioz, found him disappointing: "... supposed to be a great tenor; [he was] a red-faced cove who sang in a strangled ineffective stupid fashion; still, you never know, he may have been drunk." At the height of his fame, Mullings joined the staff of the Birmingham School of Music, teaching (rather perplexingly, given his odd technique) voice, and working from 1927 through to 1946. He also taught at the Royal Manchester College of Music from 1944 to 1949. Mullings died at the age of 72. His voice is preserved in a number of 78-rpm gramophone records which testify to the sincerity of his interpretations but highlight the limitations of his peculiar vocal technique, as hinted at politely by Cardus in the quotation cited above. Michael Scott (author of The Record of Singing, Volume 2, published by Duckworth in 1979), J.B. Steane (The Grand Tradition, Duckworth, 1971) and many other commentators have been less guarded than Cardus, noting the constricted production and distorted vowels of his recorded performances, though even Steane's 2006 Gramophone review of the reissued British National Opera Company's 1927 Columbia recording of Pagliacci noted that "the throatiness and discomfort [of Mullings's Canio] in the upper range are to some extent offset by a warmly personal timbre and intense dramatic commitment." Perhaps the strangest aspect of Mullings' approach was that it appears it was quite deliberate; and not due to some vocal frailty. In his acoustic recording of Verdi's Aida duet (Columbia 7248/9 - 1921) with Elsa Stralia, Mullings forgets himself at times, and delivers notes with a genuine abandon, freedom and musicality; only to revert to his bizarre vocal production, out of tune and all. It is a performance which provokes at once hilarity, respect and hope of what might have been, if Mullings had any continent technique. That he was accepted as a teacher at revered institutions, perhaps says a great deal regarding English vocal teaching. (wikipedia)/
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