John Sims Reeves

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Sims Reeves, circa 1889. The foremost English tenor of the mid-Victorian era, and successor to John Braham.
Sims Reeves, circa 1889. The foremost English tenor of the mid-Victorian era, and successor to John Braham.

John Sims Reeves (born October 21, 1821[1] in Shooter's Hill, Kent, England; died October 25, 1900 in Worthing), usually called simply Sims Reeves, was the foremost English operatic, oratorio and ballad tenor vocalist of the mid-Victorian era.

Contents

[edit] Musical beginnings

Sims Reeves received his earliest musical education from his father, a musician and bass soloist of Yorkshire origin in the Royal Artillery Band, and probably through the bandmaster, George McKenzie.[2] By the age of fourteen he was been appointed choirmaster of North Cray church and performed organist's duties.[3] He seems to have studied medicine for a year, but changed his mind when he gained his adult voice: it was at first a baritone. He also learnt oboe, bassoon, violin, and violoncello and other instruments. He later studied piano under Johann Baptist Cramer.[4]

He made his earliest appearance at Newcastle in 1838 or 1839[5] as the Gipsy boy in 'Guy Mannering', and as Count Rodolfo in La sonnambula (baritone parts). He studied with Messrs. Hobbs and T. Cooke, and appeared under William Charles Macready's management at Drury Lane (1841-1843) in subordinate parts in spoken theatre and in Henry Purcell's King Arthur (Come if you dare), Der Freischütz (Ottokar), and Acis and Galatea, when (1842) Händel's pastoral was mounted on the stage with William Clarkson Stanfield's scenery.[6]

From October 1843 to January 1844 he appeared in a very varied programme of musical drama, including the roles of Elvino in La Sonnambula and Tom Tug in The Waterman, at the Manchester theatre, and over the next two years was also at Dublin, Liverpool and elsewhere in the provinces.[7] Between 1843 and 1847, and especially from 1845, Reeves studied abroad, first under the tenor and pedagogue Marco Bordogni (1788-1856) of the Paris Conservatoire, and then under Alberto Mazzucato (1813-1877), the dramatic composer and teacher then newly appointed singing instructor at the Milan Conservatory.[8] Bordogni was responsible for opening and developing the upper (tenor) octave of his voice into the famous rich and brilliant head notes.[9]

His debut in Italian opera was made on 29 October 1846 at La Scala as Edgardo in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, partnered by Catherine Hayes: he got a fine reception, and Giovanni Rubini paid his respects in person.[10] (This role became Reeves's greatest, and his wife therefore nicknamed him 'Gardie'.)[11] For six months he sang at the principal Italian opera houses, and finally in Vienna, where he was rescued from his contract and returned to England.[12]

[edit] English debuts in opera and concert

He returned to London in 1847, appearing in May at a benefit concert for William Vincent Wallace, and in June at one of the 'Antient Concerts'. His career on the English operatic stage (in a leading character) began with M. Jullien's English Opera company at Drury Lane Theatre in December 1847 in Lucia, in English text, with Mme Dorus Gras (Lucia) and Willoughby Weiss, winning winning immediate and near-universal acclaim, not least from Hector Berlioz who conducted the performance. (Berlioz mistook him for an Irishman.)[13] In Balfe's Maid of Honour (based on the subject of Flotow's Marta) he created the part of Lyonnel in the same season, with Miss Birch, Miss Mirren and Willoughby Weiss.[14] In May 1848 he joined Benjamin Lumley's company at Her Majesty's Theatre and sang Linda di Chamounix with Mme Tadiolini, but severed the connection when Italo Gardoni was brought in to sing Edgardo opposite Jenny Lind.[15] But that autumn in Manchester he sang in Lucia and La Sonnambula with Miss Rainforth, days after Jenny Lind appeared in the same works there, and Reeves obtained the better houses.[16] Reeves sang La Sonnambula and Lucia at Covent Garden in October.

In oratorio, Reeves first sang The Messiah in Glasgow during 1844.[17] In February 1848 he sang Handel's Judas Maccabaeus, at Exeter Hall for John Hullah, Acis and Galatea in March and Jephtha in April and May.[18] He was, meanwhile establishing himself as the leading ballad-singer in England. In September 1848 at the Worcester festival he took a solo in Elijah, and sang in Beethoven's Christ on the Mount of Olives, and packed the hall in a recital of Oberon.[19] At the Norwich Festival he was sensational in Elijah and Israel in Egypt. After his November appearance at the Sacred Harmonic Society in Judas Maccabaeus a press critic wrote, 'the mantle of Braham is destined to fall'... (on Reeves).[20] (Braham made his formal farewell to the public in 1839.) Chorley wrote that Reeves had created 'a positive revolution in the interpretation of Handel's oratorios.'[21]

[edit] The Italian Opera

Reeves toured in Dublin at Theatre Royal in 1849, for Mr Calcraft. After his successful engagement he attended the debut there of the Irish soprano Catherine Hayes, in Lucia: her Edgardo, Sig. Paglieri, was hissed from the stage, and Reeves was obliged to stand in for the performance.[22] His London Covent Garden Italian debut was in 1849, as Elvino in Bellini's La Sonnambula, opposite Fanny Persiani (Tacchinardi) (a brilliant coloratura, the 'creator' of Lucia): he made a great effect of full lyrical declamation in Tutto e sciolto... Ah! perche non posso odiarti?. After his Edgardo in Lucia, Reeves' Elvino was generally considered his finest role in Italian opera.[23] In the winter of 1849 he returned to English opera, and in 1850 at Her Majesty's he made a further great success in Verdi's Ernani, opposite the Elvira of Mdlle Parodi and Carlo of Giovanni Belletti[24] (who was about to embark on an American tour at the invitation of Jenny Lind). In encores, the cry of 'Reeves!' became widespread.

On 2 Nov 1850 Reeves married Miss Emma Lucombe, a soprano who had a brief but brilliant season at the Sacred Harmonic Society and had joined the same company as Reeves at Covent Garden.[25] There she appeared with success as Haydee in Auber's opera, and remained on the stage for four or five years after their marriage. Emma Reeves idolised her husband and in later years became almost obsessively attentive to his comfort and reputation.[26] In February 1851 they returned to Dublin, where Reeves was to have performed with the very great soprano Giulia Grisi: she, however, was indisposed, and Mr. and Mrs. Reeves appeared together there instead in the lead roles in Lucia di Lammermoor, La Sonnambula, Ernani and Bellini's I Puritani. (Grisi had 'created' Elvira in I Puritani.) Sims Reeves also played there Macheath in the Beggar's Opera.[27]

Dublin was followed immediately by Lumley engagements at the Theatre des Italiens, Paris, where he sang Ernani (with Mlle Britani - Laura Lovelace (Elvira), Sophie Cruvelli (Dona Sol), Colini (Carlo V) and Scapini (Silva)), Carlo in Linda di Chamounix (opposite the great Henriette Sontag) and Gennaro in Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia.[28] In 1851 Reeves sang Florestan to Cruvelli's Leonore, and outshone her.[29]

[edit] New directions

In around 1850 he gave encouragement to James Henry Mapleson, who applied to him for advice as a singer, sending him off to study with Mazzucato at the Milan conservatory.[30] In 1854, after a grand concert with Reeves, Clara Novello, Mme Sainton-Dolby, Carl Formes and Arabella Goddard, Mapleson's voice gave way,[31] and he devoted himself instead to a career as operatic manager. In 1855 he gave the young Charles Santley friendly encouragement (recommending he should contact Lamperti in his forthcoming studies in Italy[32]), and they were afterwards introduced during the interval of a Royal Philharmonic concert.[33] Reeves's concert association with Santley continued until the last year of his life, and Mapleson, as manager, promoted Reeves's operatic appearances of the 1860s.

During the 1850s, however, his career moved away from the stage and increasingly focused upon concert work. Reeves sang throughout the English provinces. Michael Costa (afterwards Sir Michael) composed two oratorios for the Birmingham Festival with lead tenor parts written for Reeves. The first, Eli was presented in 1855, and (unusually in oratorio) encores were demanded. The effect of the solo and chorus Philistines, Hark the Trumpet Sounding was electric, and was witnessed in the audience by the three great Italian tenors Mario, Italo Gardoni and Enrico Tamberlik with astonishment.[34]

Reeves scored his greatest triumphs in oratorio at the Handel Festivals at the Crystal Palace. At the inaugural festival of June 1857 he delivered Messiah, Israel in Egypt and Judas Maccabaeus, and these were repeated at the Handel centennial festival of 1859, when he was in company with Willoughby Weiss, Clara Novello, Mme Sainton-Dolby and Giovanni Belletti. In Sound an Alarm Reeves created an immense sensation and the audience stood to applaud him. Yet on the third day the Musical World considered that his The Enemy Said (Israel in Egypt) surpassed even that, and was the vocal feat of the festival.[35]

Although the critic Eduard Hanslick was told that the voice had already 'gone' in 1862,[36] Hermann Klein thought that it was still in its prime in 1866, 'a more exquisite illustration of what is termed the true Italian tenor quality it would be impossible to imagine: and this delicious sweetness, this rare combination of 'velvety' richness with ringing timbre, he retained in diminishing volume almost to the last.'[37]

[edit] Return to the stage

After a period of absence from the stage, in 1859-60 an English version of Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride by H F Chorley was presented by Charles Hallé at Manchester, with Reeves, Charles Santley, Belletti and Catherine Hayes, and two private performances were also given at the Park Lane home of Lord Ward.[38] Mapleson had obtained Reeves, Santley and Helen Lemmens-Sherrington for a summer and winter season from Benjamin Lumley, and in 1860 they had a major success in George Macfarren's Robin Hood (text by John Oxenford) at Her Majesty's, again under Hallé's direction. This new composition had several very effective passages written for Reeves in his role as Locksley, including Englishmen by birth are free, The grasping, rasping Norman race, Thy gentle voice would lead me on, and a grand prison scena.[39] This proved more successful in ticket sales than the alternate Italian nights of Il Trovatore and Don Giovanni despite the rival attractions of the soprano Therese Tietjens and the tenor Antonio Giuglini.

In 1862 he presented Mazeppa, a cantata written for him by Michael Balfe, with temporary but not lasting success.[40]

In July 1863 Reeves appeared for Mapleson as Huon (Oberon) - the role written for Braham - with Tietjens, Marietta Alboni, Zelia Trebelli, Alessandro Bettini, Edouard Gassier and Santley:[41] that winter, after touring that winter as Huon, Edgardo and Faust (with Tietjens) in Dublin, in 1864 he appeared at Her Majesty's in Gounod's Faust, and was especially complimented for the dramatic instinct of Faust's soliloquy in Act I and the superb energy of the duet with Mephistopheles which closes the Act. (This was the second-year production, with Helen Lemmens-Sherrington, Signor Marchesi (Mephisto) and Santley, in which Santley first performed the aria 'Even bravest heart' especially composed for him in the role of Valentin.) Reeves's reviewer in this role remarks on the fine condition of his voice at this date.[42]

[edit] Oratorio and cantata

In around 1864, at St James's Hall, Reeves took part in what he believed was the first complete performance in England of the St Matthew Passion of J. S. Bach. This was under William Sterndale Bennett, with Mme Lemmens-Sherrington, Mme Sainton-Dolby, Willoughby Weiss and himself. Of this performance Reeves (who usually respected a composer's scoring absolutely) wrote:

'The tenor part... is in many places so unvocal, and the intervals are so awkward to take, that I was obliged to re-note it: without, of course, disturbing the accents or making it in any way unsuitable to the existing harmony. As soon as I had finished my work, to which I had devoted the greatest possible care, I submitted it to Bennett, who, except in one place, approved of all that I had done; and it was my version of the tenor part which was sung at Bennett's memorable performance, and which is still sung even to this day.'[43]

In Michael Costa's second oratorio for Reeves, Naaman (first performed autumn 1864), the soloists were Reeves, Adelina Patti (her first appearance in oratorio), Miss Palmer, and Santley. The quartet Honour and Glory was repeated by immediate and spontaneous demand.[44] Both oratorios probably owed their great original success, and later comparative obscurity, to the fact that Reeves was their ideal interpreter, and with changing vocal fashions no successor could replace him adequately. In 1869 Reeves, Santley and Tietjens sang in the premiere of Arthur Sullivan's The Prodigal Son, at the Worcester Festival. Santley considered Reeves's performance of the passage 'I will arise and go to my father' a once-in-a-lifetime experience.[45]

Reeves claimed close and primary association with several of the great tenor leads in the oratorios of Handel and Mendelssohn: Men, Brothers and Fathers, Hearken to me (St Paul), and The Enemy has Said and Sound an Alarm (Judas Maccabaeus) were particular favourites,[46] and his friend Rev Archer Gurney also extolled his Waft her, angels (Jephthah), his Samson and his Acis (Love in her eyes sits playing).[47]

[edit] The concert pitch debate

The effect of his declamation in the Crystal Palace was a main attraction, and was repeated at each succeeding triennial festival until (and including) 1874. During the later 1860s Reeves felt it necessary to make public representations against the constantly increasing rise in English Concert Pitch, which was by then half a tone higher than elsewhere in Europe and a full tone higher than in the age of Gluck. The pitch of the organ at the Birmingham Festival was (of necessity) lowered, after a similar reduction had been forced by senior artistes at Drury Lane: singers such as Adelina Patti and Christine Nilsson made similar demands. However Sir Michael Costa resisted the change, and Reeves finally withdrew his services from the Crystal Palace Handel Festivals in 1877 giving this as his reason.[48]

[edit] Retirement

The pictorial cover of Reeves's Memoirs of 1888.
The pictorial cover of Reeves's Memoirs of 1888.

Reeves continued until the 1880s without any break to sing for the Sacred Harmonic Society. In the winter of 1878-1879, he appeared with immense success in The Beggar's Opera and in Charles Dibdin's The Waterman, at Covent Garden.[49] Edward Lloyd (who took Reeves's place as principal tenor at the Handel Festivals and was effectively his successor) sang with him, and with the tenor Ben Davies, in a performance of the trio for tenor voices 'Evviva Bacco' by Curschmann, at a St James's Hall concert in 1889.[50]

His retirement from public life, at first announced as to take place in 1882, did not actually occur until 1891. Then a farewell concert for his benefit was given at the Royal Albert Hall, in which Reeves himself performed, supported by Christine Nilsson (who on this occasion refrained from slapping him on the back in congratulation), and at which he received a eulogy from Sir Henry Irving. George Bernard Shaw remarked that even then, in such Handelian airs as Total Eclipse (Samson), 'he can still leave the next best tenor in England an immeasurable distance behind.'[51]

It is certain that Reeves stayed before the public long after his greatest powers had waned. His savings were invested in an unfortunate speculation, and he was compelled to reappear in public for a number of years. In his later career he frequently withdrew from promised appearances owing to the effects of colds on his fragile vocal equipment, and through an unhappy susceptibility to the effects of nervousness. The accusation (which gained some currency) that he was given to drink was addressed and disavowed by his friend Sir Charles Santley.[52]

In 1890 Shaw, also, stated that Reeves's many cancelled appearances, which went a long way to ruin him financially, were made entirely for the sake of pure artistic integrity 'which few appreciate fully', but left him at the head of his profession, and had required enormous efforts of artistic conviction, courage, and self-respect. He wrote of a performance of Blumenthal's The Message, 'In spite of all his husbandry, he has but few notes left now; yet the wonderfully telling effect and unique quality of those few still justify him as the one English singer who has worked in his own way, and at all costs, to attain and preserve ideal perfection of tone.'[53] 'Come into the garden, Maud' appeared often in his late concerts.

Klein said much the same: 'To hear him, long after he had passed the age of seventy, sing Adelaide or Deeper and Deeper Still or The Message was an exposition of breath control, of tone-colouring, of phrasing and expression, that may truly be described as unique.'[54] Reeves sang in two concerts in the first season of The Proms, at Queen's Hall in 1895 (at which, of course the lower continental pitch was employed). They were the only two concerts of that season that were sold out: all the others made at least £50 loss.[55]

[edit] Vocal example and legacy

Braham's The Death of Nelson was prominent in Reeves' concert repertoire. Reeves was naturally aware that his career mirrored that of Braham, and remarked that, like Braham, his success had been many-sided, in opera, oratorio and ballad concerts.[56] The coincidence that his career had begun in the year of Braham's retirement (1839), and the early reviews saying that he would inherit Braham's mantle, both shaped a prophesy and helped to fulfil it. Reeves left no known recordings, but descriptions of his singing confirm that he directly carried down a tradition of style and repertoire from the age of John Braham to the early 20th century.

Braham was a virtuoso of the old Italian school, able to deliver florid passages with intensity and accuracy, who also possessed the declamatory power of a cantor. In 'assuming his mantle' Reeves consciously imitated his breadth of repertoire, and at his best had a very powerful and flexible declamation combined with great sweetness of tone and melodic power. Shaw classed his 'beautiful firmness and purity of tone' with Patti's and Santley's.[57]

In the Handel tenor roles his immediate successor in the Crystal Palace performances, until 1900, was the English tenor Edward Lloyd, who recorded Sound an Alarm, Lend me your Aid (Gounod - Reine de Saba), the tenor solos from Elijah, Braham's Death of Nelson, Dibdin's Tom Bowling and ballads of the declamatory style (such as Clay's I'll sing thee songs of Araby; Alice, Where art thou? and Come into the Garden, Maud) - all closely identified with Reeves - in the first years of the twentieth century.[58] Lloyd, and his contemporary Ben Davies, both declaim with a marked lack of vibrato, a true attack (without coup de glotte), and portamento, which may echo Reeves's, and perhaps even Braham's style.

Reeves was a member of the Garrick Club, where in his younger days he associated with Thackeray, Dickens, Talfourd, Charles Kemble, Charles Kean, Albert Smith and Shirley Brooks.[59]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Date thus in J. Sims Reeves, The Life of J. Sims Reeves, Written by Himself (Simpkin, Marshall & Co, London 1888, p. 15: but C. E. Pearce, in his Sims Reeves - Fifty Years of Music in England (Stanley Paul, London 1924), p. 17-18, (followed by most) shows a Woolwich parish baptism record (not birth) for September 26 1818, of a John Reeves. Accepting this makes Reeves and his oldest friends' statements unreliable, and postpones his voice breaking to age 16 against direct statement this occurred age 12. (ibid. p. 20). John Reeves (1818) was possibly a sibling deceased before 1821.
  2. ^ C. Pearce 1924, 18-22.
  3. ^ J. Sims Reeves, The Life of J. Sims Reeves, Written by Himself (Simpkin, Marshall & Co, London 1888, 16.
  4. ^ Reeves 1888, 16.
  5. ^ See Pearce 1924, 28-30.
  6. ^ Pearce 1924, 44.
  7. ^ Pearce 1924, 68-74.
  8. ^ Reeves 1888, 32: Rosenthal & Warrack 1974, 331.
  9. ^ Pearce 1924, 37).
  10. ^ Reeves 1888, 33.
  11. ^ Santley 1909, 83-87.
  12. ^ Pearce 1924, 83-4.
  13. ^ Reeves 1888, 60-65.
  14. ^ Reeves 1888, 65-68.
  15. ^ Pearce 1924, 117-123.
  16. ^ Pearce 1924, 128-129.
  17. ^ Pearce 1924, 69.
  18. ^ Reeves 1888, 80-81; Pearce 1924, 112-114.
  19. ^ Pearce 1924, 124-127.
  20. ^ Reeves 1888, 82.
  21. ^ Reeves 1888, 83.
  22. ^ Reeves 1888, 125-134.
  23. ^ Reeves 1888, 161-165.
  24. ^ Reeves 1888, 175-177.
  25. ^ Reeves 1888, 177-178.
  26. ^ Santley 1909, 79-87: Mapleson 1888, I, 74-76.
  27. ^ Reeves 1888, 190.
  28. ^ Reeves 1888, 201-202.
  29. ^ Chorley 1862, II, 142.
  30. ^ Mapleson 1888, I, 4.
  31. ^ Mapleson 1888, I, 7.
  32. ^ Santley 1893, 60.
  33. ^ Santley 1892, 36.
  34. ^ Reeves 1888, 214-216.
  35. ^ Reeves 1888, 229-231.
  36. ^ Quoted by M. Scott 1977, 49.
  37. ^ Klein 1903, 460-461.
  38. ^ Santley 1892, 169.
  39. ^ Reeves 1888, 214, 220-228.
  40. ^ Reeves 1888, 231.
  41. ^ Santley 1892, 199-200.
  42. ^ Reeves 1888, 231-233: Santley 1892, 201-203, 206-207.
  43. ^ S. Reeves, My Jubilee: Or, Fifty Years of Artistic Life (Music Publishing Co. Ltd, London 1889), 178-179.
  44. ^ Reeves 1888, 216-219.
  45. ^ Santley 1892, 277-278.
  46. ^ Reeves 1888, 219-220,
  47. ^ Reeves 1888, 203-205: see also Klein 1903, 7, 462.
  48. ^ Reeves 1888, 242-252.
  49. ^ Reeves 1888, 213-214, 252-255.
  50. ^ Pearce 1924, 24.
  51. ^ Shaw 1932, i, 191-192.
  52. ^ Santley 1909, 88-97.
  53. ^ G.B. Shaw 1932, i, 191.
  54. ^ Klein 1903, 462.
  55. ^ R. Elkin, Queen's Hall 1893-1944 (Rider, London 1944), 25.
  56. ^ Reeves 1888, 214.
  57. ^ Shaw 1932, iii, 255-256.
  58. ^ Scott 1977.
  59. ^ Reeves 1889, 146-47.

[edit] External links

  • Portraits of Sims Reeves (NPG)[1]

[edit] Sources

  • H. F. Chorley, Thirty Years's Musical Recollections (Hurst and Blackett, London 1862).
  • R. Elkin, Queen's Hall 1893-1941 (Rider, London 1944)
  • J. H. Mapleson, The Mapleson Memoirs, 2 vols (Belford, Clarke & Co, Chicago and New York 1888).
  • Charles E. Pearce, Sims Reeves - Fifty Years of Music in England (Stanley Paul, 1924)
  • S. Reeves, 1888, Sims Reeves, His Life and Recollections, Written by Himself (8th Edn, London 1888).
  • S. Reeves, My Jubilee: Or, Fifty Years of Artistic Life (Music Publishing Co. Ltd, London 1889).
  • C. Santley, 1892, Student and Singer, The Reminiscences of Charles Santley (Edward Arnold, London 1892).
  • C. Santley, 1909, Reminiscences of my Life (London, Pitman).
  • M. Scott, 1977, The Record of Singing to 1914 (London, Duckworth), 48-49.
  • G.B. Shaw, 1932, Music in London 1890-94 by Bernard Shaw, Standard Edition 3 Vols (Constable & Co, London).