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Jussi Björling
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| Jussi Björling will be remembered by most opera lovers and record collectors as a kind of 'ex officio' Italian tenor, a singer in the line of succession which can be drawn from Caruso to Pavarotti.
In the resplendent legacy of complete Verdi and Puccini opera recordings which he made in his maturity his voice displays all the flow, the sweep and the beauty of the truly regal Italian tenors, but it is a beauty quite different from theirs.
It is not the uncomplicated beauty of the golden Mediterranean sunshine, but the haunting beauty of the more melancholy and introspective North, and it is a fascinating feature of the early Swedish recordings reissued on this disc that they trace the development of this extraordinary artist from his earliest days as a beginner in the Royal Opera, Stockholm to the point at which his international career took wing.
Björling was born on February 5th (or possibly 2nd) 1911 in a place called Stora Tuna, some 200 miles from Stockholm, and few singers can have been more inevitably predestined to a singing career than he. His father had been a good enough tenor to reach the Metropolitan Opera, and Jussi was gifted with an exceptional boy's voice, as were both his brothers. The four of them formed what was billed as The Björling Male Quartet, and toured first Sweden and then the many Swedish communities in the United States while Jussi was between the ages of 8 and 11. The boys even made three acoustic 78s, and Björling must surely be unique in that his recording career spanned four fifths of his life. The Quartet did not, however, sing for large fees - it was often a matter of a collection at the end of the performance. By the time Björling was 16 he had lost both his parents and life became a struggle to survive. He did so thanks to a number of labouring jobs, and then, while still only 17, he applied for an audition with the leading Swedish tenor of the day, Carl Martin Oehmann. This resulted in an immediate recommendation to the Director of the Royal Opera, Stockholm, and on September 17th 1928 an interesting item appeared in the minutes of the Opera's Board of Management, namely that Mr Josse (sic) Björling should be granted a stipendium of 320 krone per month (then a very generous sum), to pay not only for his tuition in the Conservatorium but also for his board and lodging and a new suit of clothes. The arrangement was made dependent on his lodging with the Rector to make sure that he behaved himself, and his vocal tuition was undertaken by the Director of the Opera, John Forsell, himself a baritone of distinction, who also drilled his pupil strictly in matters of style, musicianship and theatrical discipline. By 1930, while he was still in his 20th year, Björling was considered ready for the stage of the Royal Opera, and after sniffing the operatic air in two walk-on parts he was given an official debut as Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni. Four months later he was entrusted with the even more demanding role of Arnold in Rossini's Guillaume Tell, and by 1935 he had already clocked up the astonishing number of 44 different roles. His voice, as these recordings reveal, was produced with a wonderfully natural ease and purity of timbre. Understandably a certain vocal shyness can be detected in the earliest of them, he fluffs the top in the 1930 'Questa o quella' and the 1934 'Di quella pira' is taken a whole tone down, whereas the 1939 version is in the original key - but on the whole the voice is remarkably settled. It was essentially a lyrical instrument, and yet even in these early days it could be used dramatically without in any way sacrificing the quality of the tone. At the age of 24 he was singing roles as punishing as Florestan and Manrico, and when he made his international debut it was a classic case of jumping in at the deep end. In the Vienna State Opera, no less, partnering Gina Cigna, one of Italy's leading dramatic sopranos, and conducted by the great Victor de Sabata he sang Radames in Aida, and he sang it in Swedish! Within the next two years he had appeared either in opera or concert in Paris, Dresden, Brussels, Prague, London, Salzburg, New York, Chicago and Buenos Aires, which is not bad going by the age of 26. Nor was he undertaking simple tasks. In Salzburg he sang Don Ottavio and the Verdi Requiem under Toscanini, and his New York debut must in its own way have been equally challenging - a concert in Carnegie Hall, which included partnering the formidable Maria Jeritza, 24 years his senior, in the Quarrel Duet from Cavalleria Rusticana. Björling's vocal splendour was complimented by a quite exceptional musical flair. His colleagues were frequently amazed by the speed with which he learnt new roles, and once they were in his head they stayed there. It was reckoned that he could go on stage at a moment's notice in about 20 roles, and given 24 hours' warning in twice that number. He was not perhaps the sunniest of souls, and Ivor Newton, the distinguished accompanist who played for Björling's British concert debut in 1937 left an illuminating pen portrait in his memoirs. 'He was', wrote Newton, 'a man of surprising contradictions; as an artist he was superb, with a remarkable range and an impeccable style... As a man he was obstinate, difficult, taciturn and unusually lazy. He hated to rehearse and would find endless excuses - his health, the weather, all varieties of ingenious reasons - to avoid doing so.' Perhaps it was this complexity of his personality, this ability to communicate so much more easily through singing than in everyday life, which helped to give his voice such a deeply affecting quality. It was once described to me as 'a voice heavy with unshed tears,' and after his death on September 9th 1960 at the age of only 49 it was a voice sadly missed on the concert platforms and operatic stages of both Europe and America. |
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