Word: heldentenor
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...Germany, Jess Thomas is known as a jugendlicher Heldentenor. Put lit erally, it means young heroic tenor...
Taking the Plunge. Thomas has not yet graduated into the ranks of the full-fledged heldentenor. Basically, this requires a voice with the coloring of a baritone and the range of a tenor. Unlike the bel canto tenor who must employ vocal embroidery, the heldentenor must possess the raw power and endurance to sing the weightiest and longest roles in opera. The supreme tests are Wagner's Tristan and Siegfried, which require 65 and 90 minutes respectively, as compared, say, with the 22 minutes for Tosca. Lauritz Melchior, the last great heldentenor, did not attempt Tristan until...
...soap than grand opera; for the first year he and his wife Bettye, a former model, lived in the laundry room of an apartment house and subsisted on a diet of potatoes. At length he got a chance in 1961 to sing at the Bayreuth Festival, home of the heldentenor, where he was hailed as a "flawless" Parsifal. Last year he became one of the few U.S. tenors ever to sing at Milan's La Scala opera house. "The Italians," he explains simply, "love...
...Knappertsbusch, an eminent Wagnerian, it was recorded at Bayreuth, where Wagner intended his "sacred dramatic festival" to be performed and where the acoustics are ideal-even, unfortunately, for coughs. Knappertsbusch slowly and hypnotically weaves the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra and Chorus into a rich tapestry of sound against which budding Heldentenor Jess Thomas as Parsifal, Baritone George London as King Amfortas and Soprano Irene Dalis as the tortured Kundry eloquently play out the medieval legend of renunciation and redemption...
...long acts, he still had a great reservoir of lyric beauty left for the Prize Song that finishes the performance-and finishes the pretensions of a good many tyro tenors with it. A big (6 ft. 3 in.) and muscular South Dakotan, Thomas may well be the Heldentenor grand opera has awaited since Melchior...