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Lawrence Tibbett
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| Early in 1929, Lawrence Tibbett, by then a leading baritone with the Metropolitan Opera, was called to Hollywood to appear in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's first important musical film of the new sound era: The Rogue Song.
With music by Franz Lehár and Herbert Stothart, The Rogue Song was a smashing success, earning Tibbett an Academy Award nomination as Best Actor and establishing him as an instant movie star.
He blazed a westward trail to Hollywood which would be followed by many opera stars during the ensuing decade.
Today, alas, nothing remains of The Rogue Song save a three-minute comedy sequence featuring Laurel and Hardy; the rest, as was the case with hundreds of pictures of that era made with perishable nitrate film, was not preserved.
Fortunately, we do have recordings of the songs, especially the meltingly lyrical When I'm Looking At You, which was played in theatres across the country as a trailer for the film itself.
A year later, Tibbett starred in The Prodigal, in which he portrayed a happy-go-lucky hobo singing (somewhat paradoxically) Without A Song, a Vincent Youmans ballad which had attracted little attention in a short-lived Broadway show a few seasons back. Without A Song became one of his most requested numbers, and still today can be found in the repertoires of most leading baritones. Also in The Prodigal, Tibbett sang Life is a Dream, written especially for him by Oskar Straus, the famous Viennese operetta composer. Back at The Metropolitan Opera House, Tibbett accomplished a feat unequalled then or since by any other singer: he created roles in six new operas, among them Wrestling Bradford in Howard Hanson's Merry Mount, and Brutus Jones in Louis Gruenberg's Emperor Jones (The other premieres by Tibbett included Deems Taylor's The King's Henchman and Peter Ibbetson, Richard Hageman's Caponsacchi and Horatio Seymour's In the Pasha's Garden). Merry Mount, a turgid tale of treachery among Puritans in seventeenth-century New England, was mounted expressly to feature Tibbett as a husky, bible-quoting hero, and met with a disappointing critical reception, lasting only nine performances. (At that, it tripled the record of In the Pasha's Garden, which expired after only three showings). Emperor Jones, on the other hand, was a distinct success. Opening early in 1933, it established Tibbett as the leading baritone of the Metropolitan, replacing Antonio Scotti, who would retire a year later, after 35 seasons. Admiring critics noted that Tibbett's performance (in black make-up though it was), was completely convincing both vocally and histrionically, and his singing of the spiritual Standin' in the Need of Prayer was the high point of an otherwise somewhat murky score. Thus Tibbett began an association which would last for many years - with music heretofore featured by black singers such as Roland Hayes and Paul Robeson. This did not necessarily mean genuine Negro spirituals, but music composed in a melodic and rhythmic genre suggesting actual spirituals. Thus, Goin' Home from Dvorák's New World Symphony, Stephen Foster's Old Black Joe, and, most characteristically of all, the songs of Jaques Wolfe, who made a speciality of what was then called la manière nègre. Tibbett sang these 'spirituals' numerous times, on radio and as concert encores: Gwine to Heaven, Shortnin' Bread - (which later became associated with Nelson Eddy), and especially De Glory Road. This last, a melodramatic description of a pitfall-filled race to elude the devil in reaching the glorious heights of heaven, became Tibbett's 'party piece', his signature song, his most requested encore. Glory Road and other songs of that genre have long since fallen out of favour, but to hear Tibbett's performance of it is even today a thrilling experience: nostalgic to those old enough to have heard him sing it in person, ear-opening to listeners of a younger generation. George Gershwin's awareness of Lawrence Tibbett's enormous talent began as early as 1929 when, having heard him in The King's Henchman at The Metropolitan Opera House, Gershwin announced that his next serious composition would be a cantata using Lincoln's Gettysburg Address as its text, and featuring Tibbett as the soloist. This project got sidetracked when the composer went to Hollywood to score a movie, and was never realised, but Gershwin continued to follow Tibbett's career, by now blossoming in radio and films. A few years later, when he began composing Porgy and Bess, he wrote to his librettist, DuBose Heyward, that he had decided on the man to play Porgy (which would have an all-black cast) because 'in my opinion he is the closest to a coloured Lawrence Tibbett.' High praise indeed, so later on when RCA Victor suggested Tibbett (who was under contract to them) as the 'Porgy' of their forthcoming album of selection from the opera, Gershwin enthusiastically concurred, and agreed personally to supervise the recording sessions which took place a week after Porgy and Bess opened on Broadway. That Tibbett and Helen Jepson (another RCA Victor contractee) rather than the actual leads in the show were chosen to record the songs caused no raised eyebrows; in those days original cast recordings were as yet unknown, the practice of white singers or actors performing in blackface was common, and (in this case) Tibbett had been a big-selling recording artist for almost ten years. The album itself was a triumph. Singing the songs of three separate characters, Tibbett captured the different moods of Porgy: his happiness (I Got Plenty O' Nuttin), his superstitious fear (Buzzard Song), his rapture (Bess, You Is My Woman), and his eventual sadness (Where's My Bess?). Also the good natured philosophy of Jake the fisherman (A Woman is a Sometime Thing), and the charming amorality of Sportin' Life (It Ain't Necessarily So). His use of Negro dialect was convincing, as it had been in the Jaques Wolfe songs, but never condescending. He continued to sing I Got Plenty O' Nuttin until the end of his concert career, many years later. A footnote: early in 1953 when Porgy and Bess returned from its triumphant tour of Europe and the Soviet Union, it played a ten month return engagement on Broadway. Lawrence Tibbett, who had for many years a secret desire to play on stage the role whose highlights he had recorded, made this wish known to the producers. They immediately began working on a plan (involving extra weekly performances in order for the current performers not to lose any work) to bring this about. Unfortunately Tibbett became ill and had to give up the idea, thus depriving audiences of what might have been an electrifying event. |
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