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Antonio Cortis
Note by Roland Vernon |
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| New York had the finance, the glamour, the record moguls and the enterprise.
But above all else, or in some measure a symbolic compound of all four, it had the Met.
Thus it was to New York in the 1920s and 30s that the ample pantheon of European operatic talent sailed in search of fame and fortune.
Indeed, the opinion of the North American public was considered so important to a first class career of the day, that few singers are now remembered who did not succeed in carving their own niche in the opulent pastures of United States musical history, or, more particularly, in the chronicles of the Metropolitan Opera, New York.
Antonio Cortis possessed an outstanding tenor voice, and was a contemporary of such gilded divos as Schipa, Martinelli, Gigli, Lauri-Volpi and Pertile, yet unlike his European colleagues, he has suffered a fate of relative obscurity.
To a large extent this can be explained by his never having appeared at the Met.
There was simply too much high quality vocal material available at the time for the New York house's management, and careful politics had to be employed in order not to upset the delicate sensibility of established company members.
(There was rivalry enough even amongst these.) So it was, that despite an enviable reputation at the major houses of Europe, and an established record of excellence with the Chicago opera, Cortis failed to find himself familiar to the opera-going public of New York.
He may also have been the victim of poor management, and a reluctance to push himself into the limelight. Frida Leider refers to his shyness in her autobiography, and his wife was to describe him years later as 'a very simple man [who] greatly loved his family.' By any standards his talent, both as a musician and vocal technician, deserve fuller recognition. Whereas so many of his distinguished contemporaries excelled in one particular area of voice production (Gigli's sweetness, Martinelli's drama, Schipa's delicacy etc) Cortis appears to have been well-schooled in almost every department. His phrasing displays the refinement of an intelligent musicality, his breath control and seamless equality of tone boast an effortlessness of delivery, while his strident top notes and dynamic effects reveal that ingredient of heart-swelling passion so essential for the convincing interpretation of heroic tenor repertoire. Indeed, the flattering epithet applied to Cortis, a 'Caruso Espagnol,' has more than a little justification. Aside from the parallels of repertoire, there is a not dissimilar golden timbre in both men's voices, and a comparable stylistic approach to interpretation. Cortis was clearly influenced by Caruso, whom he sang beside in a 1917 production of Pagliacci. He also claimed to have received tuition from his celebrated senior, and his wife wrote in 1952, 'He never had a teacher, except for Caruso who gave him some advice.' It would do no justice to either man, however, to push the comparison further. Cortis' true tenor tone was higher placed than Caruso's, and he subsequently lacked both the baritonal drama and the tonal variety which characterised so much of the latter's output. At times, indeed, the lighter legato quality employed by Cortis is somewhat reminiscent of the grace and poise of Tito Schipa, although the two must clearly have fulfilled rather separate functions (in terms of repertoire) during the eight year period that they overlapped at the Chicago opera. The Spanish tenor Antonio Cortis (his real name, Corts, was changed for the stage in 1924) was born on board a ship sailing between Algiers and Alicante, 12th August 1891. His father having died a week previously, the child Cortis and his brother were brought up by their mother, first in Valencia and then Madrid. He was exposed to music at an early age, largely due to his brother's proficiency at the clarinet, and developed full musical literacy when he attended the Royal Conservatory of Music, at the age of eight. Aside from the study of theory, composition and violin, he exercised a fine treble voice, singing both in the children's chorus of the Teatro Real, and with various church choirs. When his voice broke, in 1905, Cortis began to bend his musical energies towards a career as an orchestral violinist and composer. He returned to opera, however, in 1911, when he joined the chorus of the Teatro del Liceo of Barcelona - much against the advice of his mother and brother who felt that the move would distract him from his principal musical pursuits. He graduated from the Conservatory as a Master of Composition, but had already by this stage begun to tackle smaller, comprimario roles on the stage of the Liceo. It was not until he had completed military service in 1916, that Cortis emerged as a recognised interpreter of major roles, and he was engaged for a tour of South America in 1917 to sing Arlecchino opposite Caruso's Canio, in Pagliacci. He claims to have been invited by Caruso back to New York, but to have declined on account of the birth of his daughter Carmencita. How different might the course of his career have been, had he progressed to the Met as the great man's protégé. Having attained a certain preeminence on home soil and a good deal of repertoire experience, Cortis left Spain with his family in 1919 to try his fortunes in Italy. Contracts at Naples and Bari were to be followed by offers from the Teatro Costanzi, Rome's principal house, where he appeared for the first time in 1920, and continued for the ensuing three years. An outstanding performance of Aida in Milan led to his being approached by two recruiting agents for the Teatro Nacional of Havana, Cuba, from which he progressed to the Chicago Civic Opera, making his North American début there on November 3rd 1924. The following eight years constituted what must be seen as the high plateau of Cortis' achievement, his commitment being principally to Chicago, but out-of-season work taking him to several other operatic flash-points, such as San Francisco (1925-6), La Scala Milan (1930-1), and Covent Garden (a single season, in which he appeared opposite Nemeth, Norena and Ponselle, 1931). It was also during this period that his most significant recordings were cut, his contract with the Victor Company having been signed in 1925 - the dawn of the electrical process. The collapse of the Chicago Civic Opera due to economic recession in 1932, forced Cortis to concentrate the remainder of his career in Europe. The effect of the Spanish civil war was to restrict his movements and appearances between 1936 and 1939, and the tenor found himself frequently taking refuge in his villa from military activity.The Second World War which followed did nothing to ease the constraints of European travelling opportunities, and he continued for the last decade of his career to contain his appearances within Spain and Portugal. He retired from the stage because of ill-health in 1951, his last performance having been Tosca at Saragossa. A valiant attempt to found a school and teach in Valencia after his retirement was finally cut short by his deteriorating condition and eventual death in that city on 2nd April 1952. Categorisation, for what it is worth, would place Cortis firmly under the A moving example of all these qualities can be heard in his 1929 performance of Massenet's 'Ah, non mi ridestar.' Legato takes precedence over the convenience of physical comfort, and breath is retained for that much longer; full-blooded tone is pulled back for polished dynamic effect, which lends added poignancy; and the separation of vocal registers is entirely obscured within an ample sweep of integrated sound. So perfectly does his technique entwine itself with the latent potential of his raw gift, it seems at times to be a voice free of risks. His was a complete talent, one which brought all elements of the craft to fruition. |
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