Neil Shicoff

Neil Shicoff is a widely-known American tenor. He includes a solid, sweet lyric tone of voice and an intensely dramatic stage existence. His dad was Sidney Shicoff, probably one of the most popular cantors in NY. Neil 1st sang in public areas at a marriage in his father’s synagogue when he was eight, but serious anxiety attacks led him to avoid making such looks. When he was fourteen, yelling in the umpire at a fresh York Mets football game, Neil noticed how solid his tone of voice was when the ump yelled back again at him to shut up. He began taking lessons along with his dad, who died 2 yrs later on. Neil says he inherited a anxious disposition, volatility, and paranoia from his dad, and an obsessive perfectionism from his mom. After declining a Juilliard College audition at eighteen, he got into Hebrew Union University being a cantorial pupil. He fell out after 3 years, reapplied to Juilliard, and was recognized, using a Jennie Tourel Scholarship or grant. He examined with Margaret Marshall. His public operatic debut (with orchestra) is at La Bohème at Juilliard. He got into the apprenticeship plan on the Santa Fe Opera in 1975, performing Paco in Falla’s La Vida Breve in 1975. Also in 1975, Adam Levine known as him to Cincinnati to sing in Ernani, substituting for Richard Tucker. He debuted on the Met in 1976 as Rinuccio in Gianni Schicchi. He was quickly involved by the home to sing in Rigoletto, La Bohème, Rosenkavalier, and Werther, the last mentioned one of is own major signature assignments. In 1978 he wedded soprano Judith Haddon, a fellow pupil at Juilliard. They followed a little girl, Aliza Danielle, in 1983. Another year Shicoff’s mom died. This started many years of personal complications which heightened his functionality anxiety and provided him grounds to drink an excessive amount of, practice inadequate, and cancel shows all too often. By the finish from the 1980s, his wife submitted for divorce, among the longest and bitterest in operatic background. In 1990, performing in the Met, he discovered Werther’s difficulties merging along with his personal in his mind’s eye, and broke into uncontrollable sobbing, a open public nervous break down. He insisted on completing the efficiency, and were able to do this. He fled America for European countries where he constructed a solid Western profession. He became specifically well-known for his portrayal of another operatic psychological wreck, Offenbach’s Hoffmann. Some commentators contact him the very best Hoffman ever sold. He credits the film Common People with displaying him that he could battle his in the past to psychological control. In 1993 he fulfilled his present wife, Dawn, with whom he previously a boy, Alexander. These were in a position to marry in 1997, when the divorce process was finally resolved. In 1998, he was produced a Kammersänger of Vienna. At that time, he was acquiring heavier and even more dramatic tenor parts. In 1996 he sang his 1st Peter Grimes (the just “contemporary” opera in his repertory) and added that tormented personality to his four personal roles (the additional can be Lensky in Eugene Onegin). He came back triumphantly towards the Met in 1997 as Lensky, and once again in 2000 as Hoffmann. Also in 2000, he terminated a planned appearance in the Vienna Condition Opera Ball to protest the looks of members from the newly-elected Independence Party, which he viewed “sympathetic to Neo-Nazi tips.” Immediately after that, he contracted a serious upper respiratory an infection, leading to cancellation of his initial scheduled functionality of Andrea Chénier and all the performances until fall. In those days, he was planned to come back to Vienna in Feb 2001 to defend myself against his second contemporary opera, as Captain Vere in Britten’s Billy Budd.