George Irving Shirley (born April 18, 1934) is an American operatic tenor, and was the first African-American tenor to perform a leading role at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
George Irving Shirley (born April 18, 1934) is an American operatic tenor, and was the first African-American tenor to perform a leading role at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
Shirley was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, and raised in Detroit, Michigan. He earned a bachelor's degree in music education from Wayne State University in 1955 and then was drafted into the Army, where he became the first Black member of the United States Army Chorus. [1] He was also the first African American hired to teach music in Detroit high schools. [2] [3]
After continuing voice studies with Therny Georgi, he moved to New York and began his professional career as a singer. His debut was with a small opera group in Woodstock as Eisenstein in Strauss's Die Fledermaus in 1959, [3] and his European debut in Italy as Rodolfo in Puccini's La bohème . [1] In 1960, at 26, he won a National Arts Club scholarship competition, [4] and the following April he was the first Black singer to win the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions scholarship competition. [5] Shirley is the first Black tenor and the second Black male to sing leading roles for the Metropolitan Opera. [2] He sang there for 11 seasons.
Shirley has also appeared at The Royal Opera, London; the Deutsche Oper Berlin; the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires; the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam; Opéra de Monte-Carlo; the New York City Opera; the Scottish Opera; the Lyric Opera of Chicago; the Washington National Opera; the Michigan Opera Theatre; the San Francisco Opera; and the Santa Fe Opera and Glyndebourne Festival summer seasons, as well as with numerous orchestras in the United States and Europe. [6] He has sung more than 80 roles. [7]
He was on the faculty of the University of Maryland from 1980 to 1987, when he moved to the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance, where he was Director of the Vocal Arts Division. He currently serves as the Joseph Edgar Maddy Distinguished University Professor of Music, and still maintains a studio at the school. [1]
In 1968, Shirley won a Grammy Award for his performance in the role Ferrando in the RCA recording of Mozart's Così fan tutte. [1] He has three times been a master teacher in the National Association of Teachers of Singing Intern Program for Young NATS Teachers, and taught dozens of up-and-coming vocalists for ten years at the Aspen Music Festival and School. [7] Shirley produced a series of programs for WQXR-FM radio in New York on Classical Music and the Afro-American [2] and hosted a four-program series on WETA-FM radio in Washington, D.C. called Unheard, Unsung. [6] Shirley has been awarded honorary degrees by Wilberforce University, Montclair State College, Lake Forest College, and the University of Northern Iowa. [2] He is a National Patron of Delta Omicron, an international professional music fraternity. [2] [6] [8] In 2013, Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, of which he is a member, named him a Signature Sinfonian, an award recognizing exceptional accomplishment in the fraternity member's chosen field. [9] One his highest honors came in 2015 when Mr. Shirley received the National Medal of Arts, bestowed upon him by US President Barack Obama. [10] The following year in 2016, he was a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award during the National Opera Association's annual convention. [11] Shirley was presented with the William Warfield Legacy Award in 2019 for his dedication to the advancement of African American classical vocalists and the legacy of William Warfield. [12]
[Composer: work (other singers; ensembles; conductor), label, recording or publication date.]
The Columbia Symphony Orchestra was an orchestra formed by Columbia Records for the purpose of making recordings. In the 1950s, it provided a vehicle for some of Columbia's better known conductors and recording artists to record using only company resources. The musicians in the orchestra were contracted as needed for individual sessions and consisted of free-lance artists and often members of either the New York Philharmonic or the Los Angeles Philharmonic, depending on whether the recording was being made in Columbia's East Coast or West Coast studios.
Lorin Varencove Maazel was an American conductor, violinist and composer. He began conducting at the age of eight and by 1953 had decided to pursue a career in music. He had established a reputation in the concert halls of Europe by 1960 but, by comparison, his career in the U.S. progressed far more slowly. He served as music director of The Cleveland Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic, among other posts. Maazel was well-regarded in baton technique and possessed a photographic memory for scores. Described as mercurial and forbidding in rehearsal, he mellowed in old age.
Esa-Pekka Salonen is a Finnish conductor and composer. He is the music director of the San Francisco Symphony and conductor laureate of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra in London and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. In 2024, he announced his resignation from the San Francisco Symphony upon the expiration of his contract in 2025.
Anna Moffo was an American opera singer, television personality, and actress. One of the leading lyric-coloratura sopranos of her generation, she possessed a warm and radiant voice of considerable range and agility. Noted for her physical beauty, she was nicknamed "La Bellissima".
Luis Ernesto Alva y Talledo, better known as Luigi Alva is a Peruvian operatic tenor. A Mozart and Rossini specialist, Alva achieved fame with roles such as Don Ottavio, Count Almaviva and Fenton. He retired from the stage in 1989.
William Steinberg was a German-American conductor.
Ann Murray, is an Irish mezzo-soprano.
Renard: histoire burlesque chantée et jouée, or The Fox: burlesque tale sung and played, is a chamber opera-ballet for four male voices and 16 instrumentalists written in 1916 by Igor Stravinsky. Its original Russian text, by the composer, derives from a folk tale as collected by Alexander Afanasyev — but the piece has no name in Russian, being titled generically instead as Байка про лису, петуха, кота да барана, or Tale of the Fox, the Cock, the Cat and the Ram. The premiere took place in a French translation in Paris on 18 May 1922. Duration: 16–17 minutes.
Judith Blegen is an American soprano, particularly associated with light lyric roles of the French, Italian and German repertories.
Paul Schuyler Phillips is an American conductor, composer and music scholar. He is the Gretchen B. Kimball Director of Orchestral Studies, and Professor of Music at Stanford University, where he directs the Stanford Symphony Orchestra, Stanford Philharmonia, and Stanford Summer Symphony. He maintains an international career as a guest conductor and composer. As a scholar, he is best known for his writings on Igor Stravinsky and Anthony Burgess.
Igor Stravinsky composed his Mass between 1944 and 1948. This 19-minute setting of the Roman Catholic Mass exhibits the austere, Neoclassic, anti-Romantic aesthetic that characterizes his work from about 1923 to 1951. The Mass also represents one of only a handful of extant pieces by Stravinsky that was not commissioned. Part of the motivation behind its composition has been cited by Robert Craft and others as the product of a spiritual necessity, as Stravinsky intended the work to be used functionally.
The Flood: A musical play (1962) is a short biblical drama by Igor Stravinsky on the story of Noah and the flood, originally conceived as a work for television. It contains singing, spoken dialogue, and ballet sequences. It is in Stravinsky's late, serial style.
Anthony Dean Griffey is an American opera tenor. He is a regular presence on the stages of opera houses and concert halls around the world. Griffey has also been noted for his acting talent in addition to his voice.
Oscar Ravina, born in Warsaw, Poland, was a violinist, violin teacher and concertmaster based in New York, who has had a prolific career as a performer as well as being a current professor emeritus at Montclair State University, where a talent grant in his name is regularly given to outstanding full-time freshmen studying string instruments.
This is a listing of all of Igor Stravinsky's commercially released studio recordings as a conductor or as a pianist; it also includes recordings conducted by Robert Craft "under the supervision of the composer." Works are arranged in chronological order by date of composition.
Donald John Gramm was an American bass-baritone whose career was divided between opera and concert performances. His appearances were primarily limited to the United States, which at the time was unusual for an American singer. John Rockwell of The New York Times described Gramm as follows: "He had an unusually rich, noble tone, and although its volume may not have been large, it penetrated even the biggest theaters easily. Technically, he could handle bel-canto ornamentation fluently. But his real strengths lay in his aristocratic musicianship and his instinctive acting." Among the most notable of his many operatic roles were the title role in Verdi's Falstaff, Leporello in Mozart's Don Giovanni, and Dr. Schön and Jack the Ripper in Berg's Lulu.
Oedipus rex is an opera-oratorio by Igor Stravinsky, scored for orchestra, speaker, soloists, and male chorus. The libretto, based on Sophocles's tragedy, was written by Jean Cocteau in French and then translated by Abbé Jean Daniélou into Latin; the narration, however, is performed in the language of the audience.
Martha Lipton was an American operatic mezzo-soprano and music educator who is best known for her career performing at the Metropolitan Opera from 1944-1961. A native of New York City, she began her training as a vocalist with her mother who had a brief career as a concert soprano under the name Estelle Laiken. She later studied both privately and at the School of Musicianship for Singers, Inc and the Juilliard School. She made her professional concert debut while still a student in 1933 at Carnegie Hall, performing in a concert of light opera excerpts with the New York Light Opera Guild. In 1936 she began working as a church vocalist at both Riverside Church and Temple Emanu-El of New York.
Threni: id est Lamentationes Jeremiae Prophetae, usually referred to simply as Threni, is a musical setting by Igor Stravinsky of verses from the Book of Lamentations in the Latin of the Vulgate, for solo singers, chorus and orchestra. It is Stravinsky's first and longest completely dodecaphonic work, but is not often performed. It has been called "austere" but also a "culminating point" in his career, "important both spiritually and stylistically" and "the most ambitious and structurally the most complex" of all his religious compositions, and even "among Stravinsky's greatest works".
Thomas Warburton Paul is an American bass and voice teacher who had an active performance career during the second half of the 20th century. While more frequently heard in oratorios and other concert literature, Paul also appeared in operas during his career with companies like the New York City Opera, the San Francisco Opera, and Washington National Opera. In 1964 he created the role of Jack Spaniard in the world premiere of Robert Ward's The Lady From Colorado at the Central City Opera. In 1976 he portrayed Jared Bilby in the world premiere of Carlisle Floyd's Bilby's Doll at the Houston Grand Opera. He was a full time professor of voice at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester from 1973 through 1998, and also taught at the Aspen Music Festival and School.
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