Canada Ping!
Posted on 07/13/2015 12:02:25 PM PDT by Borges
The Canadian tenor Jon Vickers, who brought a colossal voice and raw dramatic intensity to everything he sang, including legendary portrayals of Wagner’s Tristan, Verdi’s Otello, Beethoven’s Florestan and Britten’s Peter Grimes, died on Friday in Ontario, Canada. He was 88.
The Royal Opera House in London posted a statement from the Vickers family saying the cause was Alzheimer’s disease.
From his early teens, when his robust singing in his family church in Saskatchewan was the talk of the congregation (parishioners remember his final high note in the hymn “Jerusalem” almost rattling the windows), until his fledgling appearances in the mid-1950s at the Toronto Opera Festival, the sheer size of Mr. Vickers’s voice was both the glory and the challenge of his artistry.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Classical Ping
He seems to have lived a full life, developing and delivering every ounce of his talents. I noticed many top opera singers tend to have stocky or bulking physiques.
This build may give the singer an advantage in producing the loud resonating sounds necessary to their stage craft.
In high school, I was (literally) a spear-carrier in a production of Aida in which Vickers sang the part of Radames. I remember standing in the wings only a few feet from him in the second act, watching him struggle with congestion just before he exploded onto the stage in full, powerful voice. It taught me so much about the courage necessary to perform at that level.
RIP.
thanks. Great story!
Tidbit: He was a Christian Scientist and refused to perform Tannhäuser because considered the opera blasphemous.
ping
Others of his arias were there for the clicking....enjoy, music lovers everywhere!
Thanks for the ping, Borges.
Leni/MinuteGal
I saw him in 1979 in Otello at the Met with MacNeil and Cruz-Romo. James Morris and James Levine also. Outstanding. MacNeil unfortuantely stepped on Vickers cape while Vickers was kneeling near the end of Act II, the duet. When Vickers stood up for the finish, his cape pulled him back down!
Canada Ping!
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