Happy Birthday, Leonard Warren (April 21, 1911-March 4, 1960)

Today we celebrate the birthday of one of the greatest American baritones ever, Leonard Warren (born Warenoff). The family Americanized the name when his Russian father settled in the United States.

Warren's first job was working in his father's fur business in New York In 1935.  He studied voice with Sidney Dietch and the great Giuseppe De Luca and joined the chorus of Radio City Music Hall. In 1938 he won the Metropolitan Opera Auditions of the Air and was granted a stipend to study in Italy.

Leonard Warren & Astrid Varnay sing "Favella il Doge" from Simon Boccanegra:

Warren made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in excerpts from Verdi's La Traviata and Leoncavallo's Pagliacci in November 1938. His formal operatic debut took place in New York in January 1939, when he sang Paolo in Simon Boccanegra. He quickly became one of the most popular baritones of his time. He also sang in San Francisco, Chicago, Canada, and South America. He appeared at La Scala in Milan in 1953. In 1958, he made a highly successful tour of the Soviet Union. His last complete performance at the Metropolitan Opera was as Simon Boccanegra on March 1, 1960. Three days later he collapsed while singing the aria "Urna fatale dal mio destino;" as Don Carlo during a performance of Verdi's La forza del destino. He had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died backstage.

Leonard Warren  sings "Urna fatale...È salvo, o gioia":

Leonard Warren was particularly acclaimed as one of the foremost interpreters of the great Verdi baritone roles; he also sang the parts of Tonio in Pagliacci, Escamillo in Carmen, and Scarpia in Tosca. He was reputed to be a person of an intractable character, who always tried to impose his will on stage designers, managers, and even conductors, in matters of production, direction, and tempi. He caused pain, a colleague said, but he had a great voice.

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Celebrating Hermann Uhde's Birthday

Hermann Uhde

Two great baritones in history have a lot in common, although one is sadly less known. The life and career of Hermann Uhde has much in common with the great baritone Leonard Warren. The two men were born just three years apart and both died tragically young during performances of opera just five years apart. Both men also had huge successes singing Verdi and Wagner.

Warren's death in 1960 is well-known in opera lore, having died shortly after singing the  line "Urna fatale del mio destino." In 1965, Uhde died onstage of a heart attack during a performance of Niels Viggo Bentzon’s Faust III in Copenhagen.

Born in Bremen to a German father and an American mother, Hermann Uhde's training and career was primarily in Germany. He made his debut as a baritone at the “Deutsches Theater im Haag” in 1942. In 1945 he was taken as a  prisoner-of-war and did not return to the stage until 1947. He subsequently appeared at the opera houses of Hamburg, Vienna and Munich where he became a member of the ensemble.

He gained great success in roles such as Mandryka, Gunther and Telramund, in which he was particularly admired. The artist was regularly invited to the Bayreuth Festival from 1951 to 1960 where he became one of its most important members, appearing as Holländer, Klingsor, Gunther, Donner, Wotan in Rheingold, Telramund and Melot.  He was also a guest at the Salzburg Festival and performed a superb Wozzeck  at the Met in English opposite Eleanor Steber.

He created several roles, including Creon in Orff’s Antigonae, the baritone roles in Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia and Wagner-Régeny’s Das Bergwerk zu Falun.



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