This is the first post in a series I am doing about some of the under appreciated singers of the past.
In our age of YAP Tracker and Twitter, Netrebko and De Niese, and Peter Sellars and Julie Taymor, I have noticed that some younger singers are all too unfamiliar with some of the great singers of the past that maybe didn't have the same output of recordings or weren't in the latest HD Met Broadcast. This series is just a source for some of my fellow young singers to discover some fantastic voices before they are lost in the depths of the archives of great opera houses forever.
The first of this series is tenor Leo Slezak (1873-1946)
Slezak had an interesting voice. He was a large man with a very present voice that was fully capable of singing dramatic passages, he also sang quite a lot of Wagner. While some people call him a Heldentenor, I disagree. I think he was a lyric tenor with an amazing capacity for dynamics and power. He sang Tristan and Siegfried for a short time but then decided to put them away as he was worried about the long term effects that the roles would have on his voice. He was extremely well known for his Otello, oddly enough. He was able to float some of the most beautiful pianissimo high notes of his time and his top register has as much (if not more) ease as Luciano Pavarotti's. Slezak had a voice with such a unique and individual colour and timbre that after one listen one can never truly forget it.
Whether you are hearing this familiar old singer one more time, or whether you are hearing this golden age master for the first time, enjoy!
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