Barry McDaniel
Barry McDaniel | |
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Born | Lyndon, Kansas, US | October 18, 1930
Died | June 18, 2018 Berlin, Germany | (aged 87)
Education |
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Occupation | Operatic baritone |
Organizations |
Barry McDaniel (October 18, 1930 – June 18, 2018)[1] was an American operatic baritone who spent his career almost exclusively in Germany, including 37 years at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. He appeared internationally at major opera houses and festivals, and created roles in several new operas, including Henze's Der junge Lord, Nabokov's Love's Labour's Lost, and Reimann's Melusine. He was also a celebrated concert singer and recitalist, focused on German Lied and French mélodie. He was the first singer of Wilhelm Killmayer's song cycle Tre Canti di Leopardi. He recorded both operatic and concert repertory.
Career
McDaniel was born in
In autumn 1961,
McDaniel displayed remarkable versatility as an oratorio singer and recitalist, with compositions from Baroque to contemporary. His focus in sacred music was on Bach cantatas, and being the vox Christi (voice of Christ) in both Bach's St Matthew Passion and the St John Passion, and works by Georg Philipp Telemann.[2] With Lied, he focused on Franz Schubert's great song cycles, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms and Hugo Wolf. He was also a frequent performer of French mélodies, such as by Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and Francis Poulenc, and a specialist of contemporary scores by composers such as Aribert Reimann, Anton Webern, Günter Bialas, Luigi Dallapiccola and Carl Orff. In 1967, he performed the vocal part in the premiere of Wilhelm Killmayer's song cycle Tre Canti di Leopardi in Munich, conducted by Reinhard Peters.[9]
In 1970 he was awarded the title of Kammersänger by the Senate of Berlin.[1] In the late 1980s, McDaniel began to cut back on his opera and concert performances and finally retired in 1999,[6] after a series of solo concerts dedicated to the popular songs of his native country. He lived in Berlin, where he died on June 18, 2018.[6]
Operatic roles
McDaniel's roles on the opera stage included:[2]
Gluck | Orest in Iphigenie auf Tauris |
Mozart |
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Donizetti | Malatesta in Don Pasquale |
Domenico Cimarosa | Count Robinson in Il matrimonio segreto |
Rossini |
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Albert Lortzing |
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Leoncavallo | Silvio in Pagliacci |
Wagner |
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Puccini |
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Richard Strauss |
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Debussy | Pelléas in Pelléas et Mélisande |
Poulenc | Husband in Les mamelles de Tirésias |
Roger Sessions | Cuauhtemoc in Montezuma |
Hans Werner Henze | Secretary in Der junge Lord |
Isang Yun | Title role in Der Traum des Liu-Tung |
Aribert Reimann | Count Lusignan in Melusine |
Voice and recordings
McDaniel's voice was a lyric baritone with a range of 2½ octaves (from a low F in the St John Passion to a high A in Pelléas et Mélisande), a remarkable vocal technique and breath control (he was able to sing the 9-bar melisma in the opening phrase of the Kreuzstabkantate, BWV 56 in one breath), and a striking beauty of tone. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians praises his "mellifluous voice" as well as "a fine sense of line and an acute understanding and projection of the text".[10] Over the years the voice gained in nuances and depth of expression but never lost its youthful, lyrical character, and McDaniel always avoided straying beyond the limits of his Fach, e.g. to heavy Wagner or Italian Verismo parts. The weekly Die Zeit commented on his role in Melusine in 1971: "Such poetic vocal expression, such lucid operatic lyricism is unequalled today, and who could give it a more beguiling voice than Barry McDaniel."[11]
McDaniel's recordings span his entire repertoire and all phases of his career. Some of them are commercially available: cantatas and oratorios by Johann Sebastian Bach, operas by Mozart, Strauss and Henze, and works of contemporary church music, many of which he was the first and only to commit to record. In 1964, he recorded
References
- ^ a b c d e Salazar, Francisco (June 20, 2018). "Obituary: Baritone Barry McDaniel Dies at 87". operawire.com. Retrieved June 21, 2018.
- ^ ISBN 978-3-598-44088-5.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-948875-53-3.
- ISBN 978-0-8021-9040-6.[page needed]
- ISBN 978-1-399-07653-1.
- ^ a b c d "Zum Tod von Barry McDaniel / Mit Intensität und Hingabe". Potsdamer Nachrichten (in German). June 20, 2018.
- ^ a b "Barry McDaniel". Bayreuth Festival. Archived from the original on June 22, 2018. Retrieved June 22, 2018.
- ^ Melusine 1971, Scottish Opera, 2000[full citation needed]
- ^ "Tre Canti di Leopardi / per baritono e orchestra". Schott. Retrieved September 10, 2017.
- ^ Alan Blyth in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. 15, 2nd ed., p. 456, London & New York, 2001
- ^ Wolfram Schwinger in Die Zeit, May 7, 1971[full citation needed]
- ^ a b c "Barry McDaniel (Baritone) / Discography". Bach Cantatas website. Retrieved June 22, 2018.
- ^ Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 4, 1963[full citation needed]
Further reading
- "Barry McDaniel – A Singer's Life", a four-part interview with Aryeh Oron, April–June 2002, Bach Cantatas website
- "American Papageno with Viennese Charm" by Gerhart Asche, Opernwelt, August 2004
External links
- Literature by and about Barry McDaniel in the German National Library catalogue
- Barry McDaniel discography at Discogs
- "Barry McDaniel (Baritone)", Bach Cantatas website
- Barry McDaniel Theaterfreunde Mainz
- Video of a concert performance on (1970)