Joseph Shore (16 April 1948 - 6 July 2021) was an American operatic Baritone and voice teacher. He has excelled particularly in the operas of Giuseppe Verdi.
Joseph Shore (16 April 1948 - 6 July 2021) was an American operatic Baritone and voice teacher. He has excelled particularly in the operas of Giuseppe Verdi.
Born in Carthage, Missouri, Shore suffered from a congenital heart disease called coarctation of the aorta, and, at the age of 19, underwent open heart surgery. In college he majored in theology with a second major in speech and drama and did his masters work in theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky and Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri. He later did masters work in voice and opera at the University of Tulsa School of Music. [1] After little vocal training, Shore won the 1974 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions at the district level and became an apprentice artist at the Santa Fe Opera. Fellow apprentices included Ashley Putnam, Vinson Cole, and Chris Merritt. The next year he won all the levels of the Met auditions [2] and was one of the ten national finalists. That same year, Ted Harris, Shore's vocal coach, introduced him to basso-opera singer Jerome Hines and Shore was then given a leading role in Hines' opera on the life of Christ, I Am The Way. Mr. Shore sang with the Hines company until 1996 and developed a close artistic relationship with Hines. While in New York, Mr. Shore also studied with legendary baritone Cesare Bardelli. [3]
Shore performed with the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the San Francisco Opera, the San Diego Opera, the Houston Grand Opera, the New Jersey State Opera, Tulsa Opera, Opera Omaha, the Arizona Opera, the Nevada Opera, the Toledo and Dayton Operas, the Lyric Opera of Dallas, the Fort Worth Opera, the Goldovsky Opera Theater, the Chamber Opera Theatre of New York, New York Grand Opera, Opera Classics of New Jersey, the Chautauqua, Aspen, and Northern Ireland Festivals, the Edmonton Opera, the Canadian Broadcasting Company, the BBC, the Belfast Grand Opera, the Youngstown Symphony, the Savannah Symphony, the Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic, the Raleigh Symphony, and the Jerome Hines Opera Troupe. Shore performed roles such as Macbeth, Rigoletto, Germont, Amonasro, Renato, and Falstaff, among the Verdi roles, as well as Alfio, Tonio, Scarpia, Barnaba, Telramund, Pizarro, and Salieri.
In 1988, Shore became a voice teacher and accepted appointments to the faculties of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the University of British Columbia and Indiana University. In 1995, he published an interview with Jerome Hines in the NATS Journal. [4] Among his students in the pop field were Alexz Johnson and Michael Bublé, and in opera Campbell Vertesi, Bryn Vertesi, David Fankhauser, [5] Davide di Ragusa, [6] Siphiwe McKenzie, Le Roy Jameson, Tyler Lincoln, [7] and Paul Grindlay. [8] His most famous student was Jerome Hines himself who studied informally with Shore and dedicated his book, The Four Voices of Man, [9] to him.
Shore's heart disease worsened over the years and shortened his career. He received an artificial heart valve in 1994 and had to replace it in 2006. Then 58 years old, he contracted lung disease due to heart complications and had to retire from professional singing.
Shore lived in Burnaby, B.C. teaching voice. Much of his pedagogical writing, including his biography, is available from his web site. [10]
In addition to the Metropolitan Opera auditions Shore also won the Bruce Yarnell Memorial Award for Baritones in 1981 [11] and the WGN Auditions in 1976.
A tenor is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the countertenor and baritone voice types. It is the highest male chest voice type. The tenor's vocal range extends up to C5. The low extreme for tenors is widely defined to be B2, though some roles include an A♭2 (two A♭s below middle C). At the highest extreme, some tenors can sing up to the second F above middle C (F5). The tenor voice type is generally divided into the leggero tenor, lyric tenor, spinto tenor, dramatic tenor, heldentenor, and tenor buffo or spieltenor.
A baritone is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the bass and the tenor voice-types. The term originates from the Greek βαρύτονος (barýtonos), meaning "heavy sounding". Composers typically write music for this voice in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C (i.e. F2–F4) in choral music, and from the second A below middle C to the A above middle C (A2 to A4) in operatic music, but the range can extend at either end. Subtypes of baritone include the baryton-Martin baritone (light baritone), lyric baritone, Kavalierbariton, Verdi baritone, dramatic baritone, baryton-noble baritone, and the bass-baritone.
Sherrill Milnes is an American dramatic baritone most famous for his Verdi roles. From 1965 until 1997 he was associated with the Metropolitan Opera. His voice is a high dramatic baritone, combining good legato with an incisive rhythmic style. By 1965 he had made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera. His international debuts followed soon thereafter, and Milnes became one of the world's prominent Verdi baritones of the 1970s and 1980s.
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Angela M. Brown is an American dramatic soprano particularly admired for her portrayal of Verdi heroines.
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Tulsa Opera is an American opera company based in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Anselmo Colzani was an Italian operatic baritone who had an international opera career from the late 1940s through 1980. He particularly excelled in the Italian repertory and was most associated with the works of Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini. He began his career in Italy in 1947 where he quickly became a regular presence at that country's best opera houses, including La Scala. In the mid-1950s he began appearing at major opera houses throughout Europe and the United States. In 1960 he joined the roster at the Metropolitan Opera where he spent most of his time through 1978. Opera News commented that while his voice may have "lacked the sheer beauty [of other baritones], his performances had an Italianate urgency and forthright thrust that were unique, which established himself as a powerful, striking presence."
Stella Zambalis is an American spinto soprano born in Cleveland, Ohio. She has been called one of the best sopranos in the world today.
A bass is a type of classical male singing voice and has the lowest vocal range of all voice types. According to The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, a bass is typically classified as having a vocal range extending from around the second E below middle C to the E above middle C (i.e., E2–E4). Its tessitura, or comfortable range, is normally defined by the outermost lines of the bass clef. Categories of bass voices vary according to national style and classification system.
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Anthony Michaels-Moore is an English operatic baritone and the first British winner of the Luciano Pavarotti International Voice Competition. Michaels-Moore has since performed in many of the world's major opera houses across Europe, the Americas, and Asia. He has distinguished himself as a specialist in Verdi and Puccini roles, most renowned for his portrayals of Falstaff, Nabucco, Rigoletto, Simon Boccanegra, Iago in Otello, Germont in La traviata, Sharpless in Madama Butterfly, and Scarpia in Tosca. In addition to the standard repertoire, he has sung and recorded the baritone roles of some of the less-known 19th Century Italian operas, as well as the popular English art song cycles by Stanford and Vaughan Williams.
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