Thomas Stewart (singer)

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Thomas Stewart (29 August 1928 - 24 September 2006) was an American bass-baritone who specialized in Wagnerian roles. He was married to the American soprano Evelyn Lear.

Thomas James Stewart was born in San Saba, Texas. He firstly studied electrical engineering in Texas, but ultimately found his way to the Juilliard School, where he studied with Mack Harrell. He made his debut in 1954 as La Roche in the American premiere of Richard Strauss’s Capriccio, and went on to sing with the New York City Opera and the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

He married soprano Evelyn Lear in 1955, and they both traveled to Berlin in 1957 on Fulbright Scholarships. He made his major-role debut with Städische Opera, now the Deutsche Oper Berlin, in 1958 as Escamillo in Bizet's Carmen. He remained on the Berlin company’s roster until 1964. He debuted at the Royal Opera House in 1960, again as Escamillo, and sang frequently at Covent Garden (Don Giovanni, the Dutchman, Gunther) until 1978; he was a regular at the Bayreuth Festival for 15 years (1960-75), singing, ultimately, Wotan and Wolfram.

Stewart made his Metropolitan Opera debut as Ford in Verdi's Falstaff in 1966. He returned to that house regularly until 1980; the Met database lists his last season there as 1993-94. Aside from the above, his best known roles included Iago in Otello and Count di Luna in Il Trovatore (both by Verdi), and Tchaikovsky's Yevgeny Onegin. He sang the title roles in the American premieres of Hindemith’s Cardillac (1967) at the Santa Fe Opera and Aribert Reimann’s Lear (1981) with the San Francisco Opera. He received a medal from that company in 1985 for his 25 years of distinguished performance.

In recent years, he and his wife ran the Evelyn Lear and Thomas Stewart Emerging Singers Program of the Wagner Society of Washington, D.C.

Thomas Stewart died of a heart attack while playing golf near his home in Rockville, Maryland, aged 78. He is survived by his wife and two children.

[edit] Selected discography

• With Herbert von Karajan: Die Walküre (as Wotan), Siegfried (as Wanderer), Götterdämmerung (as Gunther)
• With Rafael Kubelík: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (as Hans Sachs), Lohengrin (as Telramund)
• With Hans Knappertsbusch: Parsifal (as Amfortas)
• With Pierre Boulez: Parsifal (as Amfortas)

[edit] Weblinks

• Thomas Stewart, 78, Baritone on Opera Stage, Dies, New York Times, September 26, 2006