Lauritz Melchior

On 2 April 1913 the Royal Opera assigned him the début rôle of Silvio in Pagliacci and thereafter formally engaged him as a tenor/baritone. Thus gainfully employed, he married Inger Holst-Rismussen whom he had met while singing the elder Germont with a touring company of Traviata. In the spring of 1916 he toured again, this time as Count di Luna in II trovatore. A former Metropolitan contralto, Sarah Cahier, sang Azucena. One evening the company soprano was loath to sing her high C in the duet with Di Luna. Melchior took the C, which he sang effortlessly. Mme Cahier, now convinced that Melchior was “a tenor with the lid on”, charged the directors of the Royal Opera with the responsibility of his artistic development. They arranged for him to study with the great Kammersänger Vilhelm Herold, who, as Melchior said, “did for me the transition, the work that has to be done to change a baritone into a tenor”. About that process Melchior was rather vague and noncommital: “The heldentenor voice is one that goes up with age. If you start as a real tenor and try to do heroic rôles, you bring the voice down instead of up. The high notes begin to disappear. It’s different if you begin as a high baritone. That way you have only to make the middle high of the voice a little lighter. Then you put the top notes on it.”

On 8 October 1918, 28-year-old Melchior made his Wagnerian début as Tannhäuser at the Royal Opera. It was greeted by a “let’s wait and see how it develops” attitude, although it was clear that the voice was special and his acting ability was superior. Discouraged by the comprimario rôles given to him thereafter, Melchior went to England to try his luck, which turned out to be good. Sir Henry Wood, conductor of the Promenade Concerts and a Wagner lover, engaged him for a concert attended by the British author Hugh Walpole. From that time on, Walpole, socially prominent and lionised by the upper crust of London, became Melchior’s champion. He found management for the tenor; he sponsored a sold-out, very successful London début concert; he introduced Lauritz to the royal family who accepted him wholeheartedly; he found for Lauritz a fashionable and socially prominent voice teacher, Victor Beigel, who arranged an audition with Franz Schalk, co-director of the Vienna Staatsoper. Schalk recommended that Melchior study with Anna  Bahr-Mildenburg in Munich. After some study and anxious to move on, Melchior persuaded Bahr-Mildenburg to let him do a concert in Munich. This highly successful concert prompted a telegram from Siegfried Wagner: Melchior had been summoned to Bayreuth.