Word: tenore
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...fill the gigantic mold of a Wagnerian hero, a tenor should 1) have a voice big enough and resonant enough to soar over the timpani-tempered Wagnerian orchestra, 2) be robust enough to support swooning Wagnerian sopranos, and 3) preferably be named Lauritz Melchior. At the Metropolitan Opera last week, a topnotch revival of Wagner's Die Walkuere (conducted by Karl Boehm) offered the audience a dramatic tenor who ideally fulfilled the first two requirements and made the third one seem unimportant. The tenor: 33-year-old, Canadian-born Jon Vickers...
...Tenor Vickers made an inauspicious Met debut earlier in the year in Pagliacci, later scored a notable triumph as Florestan in Fidelio (TIME, Feb. 8). His performance last week in the role of Siegmund prompted some of the loudest and longest cheers heard at the Met this season. A solidly constructed man (5 ft. 9 in., 215 lbs., chest 47 in.), Vickers is a passionate, convincing actor; his voice is heavy but admirably flexible, capable of varied and subtle shadings. It was at its most spectacular when it surged over the orchestra in Siegmund's furious outbursts...
...Wagner, but I want to sing for 25 years, not ten years. I want to keep my Italian roles, because Italian caresses the voice while German exploits it." Moreover, Vickers refuses to jump into the role of Tristan, as his public and press have urged him to. No dramatic tenor, he reasons, really reaches vocal maturity until he is 38 or 39, and for a part as taxing as Tristan, it takes a few years beyond for "the artist to mature in the role...
...Tenor Vickers' soberly practical attitude toward his success stems from the fact that it took a long time coming. At home in Prince Albert, Sask., Vickers sang "in every church choir in town," but planned to become a doctor. When he graduated from high school (his father was a school principal), he found the colleges jammed with returning veterans, turned to clerking in Safeway and Woolworth stores, eventually became a tool buyer for the Hudson Bay Co. department store. When he was appearing in an amateur production of Naughty Marietta, the Toronto Conservatory heard of him, gave...
...Destino last week, Schippers showed what he could do with an orchestra that only the week before, at the opening of Fidelia (TIME, Feb. 8), had sounded ragged and disorganized. "Tommy" Schippers had never conducted Verdi's Forza before, but he led orchestra and singers (Soprano Leonie Rysanek, Tenor Richard Tucker, both in top form) with a muscular authority that injected grand drama into every twist and turn of the tortuous plot. For Schippers, the essence of a good performance is spontaneity, and to achieve it when a performance becomes dull, he has been known to "make a deliberate...