 Lauritz Melchior, lourits melkôr originally Lebrecht Hommel (1890-1973) the Danish singer was one of the most famous Wagnerian Heldentenors, singing Tristan over 200 times and appearing often as Siegfried, Lohengrin, Siegmund and Parsifal. He sang with a model legato and a feel for the shape and direction of a phrase and an equalised
scale that was the envy of many a bel canto singer. His energy and projection were formidable.
At the same time he had a great sense of humour and while he was in America he began to mimic Frank Sinatra which led to some good humoured banter between the two singers -- and to both radio stations and film studios taking an interest in the lighter side of the Melchior talent.
In the 1930s and 1940s the Hollywood studios, particularly MGM, took a rather inverted snobbish interest in the world of opera and would include stars of the opera and operatic arias in otherwise light-hearted musicals (or in films with a specific operatic orientation such as The Great Caruso) with varying degrees of success. Thus it was that the MGM
recording company recorded, over five sessions in 1946-7, the two dozen or so numbers on this album as an extension of Melchior's appearances in five MGM movies.
Now there is always negative comment about operatic singers taking on show numbers. I remember Kiri Te Kanawa being criticised as too powerful and too old for her role in the DG recording of West Side Story. I was one of the dissenting voices. I feel the same applies here in respect of some of the numbers - especially, Melchior's renderings of Cole Porter's
'Easy to love' and Jerome Kern's 'The Song is You'. Melchior's voice tends to overwhelm. This may be acceptable, on one level, in the opera house where a certain bombast is expected in romantic arias, but it does not fit comfortably in the context of musical comedy where a sense of intimacy is demanded for songs like the two I have mentioned. That intimacy, in this smaller context, is, in a sense, synonymous with
sincerity -- and that seems to be drained by the power of Melchior's voice (and his thick foreign accent). On the other hand Melchior is much more at home in his arias from Tosca and Pagliacci and songs from the operettas like 'The Kiss in Your Eyes' (Im chambre séparée) from Heuberger's Der Opernball and Leoncavallo's exuberant 'Mattinata'.
Source: http://www.musicweb.uk.net/film/2001/Jan01/collection_melchior.html
At Dana
http://www.wagner-gesellschaft.de/melinh.htm
http://www.metopera.org/history/week-991206.html
http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/1450/melchior.html
Shirlee Emmons, author of "Tristanissimo"
http://www.sb.aau.dk/dlh/melchior/melchior.html
Danish-American operatic tenor, born in Copenhagen. He made his debut as a baritone in 1913 at the Copenhagen Opera House. Melchior's first success as a tenor was at Covent Garden, London, in 1924. Subsequently, he sang at the Festival at Bayreuth, Germany, and, from 1926 to 1950, at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. One of the greatest dramatic tenors of his time, he
appeared primarily in heldentenor roles in operas by the German composer Richard Wagner. Melchior, who became a U.S. citizen in 1947, also performed in several motion pictures.
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