THE MASTER MUSICIANS

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 60, 2 June 1927, Page 14

THE MASTER MUSICIANS

GREAT SINGERS PAST & PRESENT

JEAN DE RESKE, SUPREME TENOR.

EAN DE RESKE, like Caruso, did not know at first whether he was a baritone or a tenor, and the uncertainty in his case lasted longer. It was in 1874, when he was twenty-four years old, that he made his first appearance on any stage, as a baritone, in Venice, under the Italianised name De Reschi. His debut as a tenor was not made till five years later, at Madrid. As a tenor he immediately became famous

.mV., ..Kiuxiu. icnui nc uecame lamous and soon had all the world marvelling at his art, and paying him higher rates than any other singer of his sex had ever received. Io appear in the same cast with Jean de Reske was for many years the ambition of all other opera singers. There might be vacant seats and apathy when other famous artists were on the boards, but never when Jean sang. His presence gave an “atmosphere” which benefited the whole performance Why must Jean de Reske be considered a greater artist than the redoubtable Enrico Caruso? Because the range of his gifts and powers was so much greater. Caruso’s eminence was limited to Italian roles; de Reske was equally at home in Italian, French, or German opera. The best of all Italian operas is “Aida” and in that, as Rhadames, no Italian vocalist-actor has equalled him, according to the eminent critic Henry T. Finck. “In French opera no French tenor has equalled him, and in the greatest Wagnerian roles no German tenor has been his peer. There is a record for you—the record of a Pole who went to Italy, to France, to Germany, and beat the native singers on their own ground, in their own specialties!” In 1888 he made his first appearance in London, at Covent Garden, and from that season dates the revival of opera as a fashionable amusement in London. It was not only Italian and French Opera that he made “fashionable”—he did the same for Wagner—strange to relate—in London, In New York, and even in Paris. The chief lesson of de Reske’s career ’may he learned from the following extract from a criticism of one of his performances as Romeo in Gounod’s opera “Romeo and Juliet.” “He enjoys the consciousness of being the greatest tenor ever lived; he loves the roles he impersonates so incomparably; and he must be royally happy in knowing that he does everything for art’s sake and nothing for effect or applause. Ye tenors and sopranos, ye baritones, basses and contraltos, who fancy that to win the public it is necessary to stoop to its lowest taste —look at Jean de Reske! He never stoops to conquer, he raises the public to his own level. Never does he rely for applause or success on explosive high notes or sentimental distortion of melodies. Every bar he sings meets the composer’s highest ideal, he abhors clap-trap as much as Wagner did—and his reward is such as we see.” Jean de Reske (who was born at Warsaw in 1850) came of a musical family. His mother was a trained singer; his sister, who died young, had already distinguished herself as a prima donna; one brother, named Victor, had a fine tenor voice which he preferred to keep to himself; and another orother, Edouard, became among the basses of his day what Jean was among the tenors. Jean de Reske died in 1917, in the poorest of circumstances, the war having impoverished him as it did so many others. His name, however, will go down to posterity as one of the greatest operatic artists of all tin.