Kurt Baum

A dramatic tenor alternately gauche and exciting, Kurt Baum filled an essential place for the Metropolitan Opera and other homes without ever quite having attained celebrity position. Long after his nominal pension from your stage, he continuing to create concert looks. Noted throughout his profession for stentorian best notes, he later on wrote many treatises on preservation from the tone of voice and performing well in later years. Whatever his deficiencies as an designer, he was an exemplar of durability. That he could apply himself to creative high purpose could be noticed on the Traubel/Melchior disk of Wagner within an prolonged picture from Lohengrin. Urged by his businessman dad to become doctor, Baum spent his senior high school and university years in Cologne, Germany, before getting into medical college at Prague University or college in 1927. During this time period, Baum involved in several athletic activities, getting the novice boxing champ of Czechoslovakia. He also evinced a solid desire for music. According to 1 story — maybe true, not — his performing tone of voice obtained in timbre and power when his nasal area was damaged by popular German boxer Maximum Schmeling (there might have been some truth to the function having occurred, but Baum was mentioned for having a good vocal creation from the starting of his profession). Urged by close friends to sing appropriately, Baum still left medical college and enrolled at Berlin’s Music Academy in 1930. By 1933, Baum was sufficiently ready to earn the Vienna International Performing Competition, taking initial award among 700 contestants. Noticed with the Intendant from the Zurich Opera, Baum was involved for that business and produced his debut there in 1933 performing in Alexander von Zemlinsky’s Der Kreidekreis. After performing a number of lyric jobs at Zurich, Baum was involved the following 12 months from the Deutsches Theatre for any succession of even more dramatic functions. Feeling the necessity for further research, Baum journeyed to Italy to utilize Eduardo Garbin in Milan and with faculty at Rome’s Accademia Santa Cecilia. Fortified with extra technical experience, Baum sang in lots of of Europe’s leading homes in Paris, Vienna, Budapest, Monte Carlo, with Salzburg. Noticed in Monte Carlo from the director from the Chicago Opera, Baum was involved and produced his American debut in Chicago on November 2, 1939, performing Radames towards the Aida of Rose Bampton. He was noticed in subsequent months as Don José and Manrico. In the mean time, Baum became a member of the Metropolitan Opera, producing his debut on November 27, 1941, as the Italian Vocalist in Der Rosenkavalier. With this brief but memorable component, his talents had been well matched towards the role’s requirements. Critic Robert Lawrence explained his performing to be of “superb quality,” noting the energy of his best notes. For another quarter hundred years, Baum sang the spinto repertory in the Metropolitan to testimonials both complimentary and important. When the business installed Wozzeck for the very first time in 1959, Baum discovered an extremely congenial function in the preening Drum Main. After WWII, Baum came back to European countries and produced his debut at La Scala as Manrico and re-established relationships with other main companies. He made an appearance for the very first time in London, where he was discovered to be always a “rather metallic” Radames in his June 4, 1953, debut. Through the 1956 — 1957 period, he was booed as Manrico. Many early Maria Callas recordings produced reside in Mexico City present Baum at his greatest — and most severe.