LEONARD WARREN, AMERICAN BARITONE |
REVIEW
by Willard Manus Leonard Warren, one of America's greatest baritones, came to prominence in the middle of the 20th century when he starred in hundreds of productions at the Met, gave concerts all across the USA, South America and Europe, and sang on radio, tv and records. Warren, who died on stage March 4, 1960 while singing Don Carlos in La Forza del destino, is the subject of a magnificent biography by Mary Jane Phillips-Matz, LEONARD WARREN, AMERICAN BARITONE (Amadeus Press, 520 pp., $39.95). The book tells the
remarkable story of Warren's life, which began in a Bronx tenement and
saw him go from shy, dreamy youth to music student at |
It wasn't until he began studying with voice coach Byron Warner that Warren gained suffiencient polish and confidence to try out for the Met. He sang one song for Met director Wilfred Pelletier, who sent him home without a word. Warren left feeling he had flopped, but when he got home found a call from Pelletier asking him to come to his office in the morning. "I wanted to confirm with one further trial the stability of his voice and convince myself that I had just heard a voice that was truly extraordinary," Pelletier said later. "My ears had not deceived me! Once again I was absolutely amazed as I listened to him." That led to a contract and a long association with the Met, which became Warren's spiritual and artistic home for the rest of his life. His studies there with the likes of Pelletier, Sidney Dietch and Frank St. Leger led to the blossoming of his talent and his ascension up the ladder of success. Through it all, Warren remained the quiet, reserved and stubborn person that he was. As one colleague recalled, "Once he did something in a given way, that was it; it was like something engraved in stone. And it was very difficult to get him to change." Phillips-Matz takes
the reader through the many triumphs Warren had on The personal details are all there, but they pale beside the important thing: his voice. A voice that Renata Tebaldi called "a voice of velvet. It was a very, very soft, velvety voice...He was truly stupendous. It was something marvelous. He had to sing. That is what his life was; he had to sing." While reading LEONARD
WARREN it was wonderful to have at hand the |