Jean de Reszke

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Jean de Reszke, born Jan Mieczyslaw, (14 January 1850 - 3 April 1925) was a Polish operatic tenor born in Warsaw. His parents were Poles; his father was a state official and his mother a capable amateur singer, their house being a recognized musical centre.

After singing as a boy in the Cathedral of Warsaw, he studied law at the University there, but in a few years he abandoned this and went to Italy to study singing. He made his first public appearance, as a baritone, in Venice in January 1874, as Alfonso in La Favorita, and in the following April he sang for the first time in London, appearing at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and a little later in Paris.

He was not entirely successful and retired for a further period of study, during which his voice gained remarkably in the upper register; so that when he made his first reappearance at Madrid in 1879 it was as a tenor, in the title-role of Robert le Diable. Jean de Reszke's great fame as a singer dates from this time. For several seasons he sang regularly in Paris, and he reappeared at Drury Lane in 1887 as Radames. In the next year he was again in London, this time at Covent Garden as Vasco da Gama; this appearance was mainly responsible for the revival of the opera as a fashionable amusement in London. He appeared in London nearly every year from this date until 1900. In 1891 he visited America, and from 1893 to 1899 he was welcomed each year at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. Jean de Reszke's most successful parts were the title-role of Le Cid, which was written for him by Massenet, and those of Romeo, Lancelot in Elaine, and Lohengrin, Walther von Stolzing, Siegfried and Tristan in Wagner's operas.

In 1904 illness compelled him to retire from the stage, and he subsequently divided his time between teaching singing in Paris -- his pupils included Adelina Patti, Bidù Sayão, Leo Slezak, Claire Croiza and Maggie Teyte -- and breeding race-horses in Poland.

Noted for his ability to combine a heroic style with a high standard of elegance and refinement, de Reszke has often been considered one of the greatest tenors of all time. It is therefore highly unfortunate that his two gramophone records announced in 1905 never actually appeared (reports of the survival of one of them,current in the 1950s, are to be discounted), and that only a handful of phonograph recordings made at the New York Metropolitan Opera in 1901 give a faint glimpse of him at work. (Music librarian Lionel Mapleson recorded opera selections using a cylinder phonograph with an enormous horn suspended 40 feet above the stage.)

Jean de Reszke's younger brother, Edouard de Reszke, born in Warsaw on 23 December 1855, was also famous as an operatic singer in the basso range. He appeared for the first time in Paris in April 1896, and sang with his brother for many seasons both in London and in New York.