Jussi Björling

Jussi Björling and Nora de Wit (1960)

Jussi Björling's bust by Pieter de Monchy 1961

Jussi Björling ( pronunciation : [ ˌ jɵsːɪ ˈbjœːɭɪŋ ], actually Johan Jonatan Björling , born February 2, 1911 in Borlänge ( Dalarna ), Sweden ; † September 9, 1960 in Siarö , Österåker municipality ) was a Swedish opera singer with a tenor voice .

life and career

Jussi Björling came from the Swedish province. His Finnish grandmother introduced the first name “Jussi”. His father David Björling must also have had a beautiful voice, which does not seem to have been recorded on any recording.

As a singing teacher who also wrote a guide to voice training, he saw his main task in training his sons Gösta, Olle and, above all, Jussi, whose performances also provided the family with a living.

Jussi's mother died in 1917 shortly after the birth of their fourth son Karl. From October 1919 to April 1921, the remaining Björlings traveled through the United States . Jussi and his brothers performed singing in front of Swedish emigrants under the direction of their father. The first recordings were probably made in New York in February 1920 in which Jussi Björling's voice - at that time still a boy soprano - can be heard. In the mid-twenties, the older brothers could also be heard performing solo numbers in concerts.

In August 1926 the quartet in the province of Skåne disbanded after the sudden death of their father. In Ystad , fifteen-year-old Jussi was given a job as a sales assistant in a household goods store by friends; he also tried to earn some money by singing. During this time, his vocal talent was discovered by an opera-loving pharmacist. He knew his father David and was also friends with John Forsell, famous baritone and at the time director of the Stockholm Royal Opera. He drew his attention to the highly talented son of Forsell, who is also well-known, David Björling (source: biography 'Jussi'). In August 1928 Jussi sang at the Stockholm Conservatory and was immediately accepted (it was here that he also met his future wife Anna-Lisa Berg), his teacher was John Forsell . Björling made his first appearance as a professional opera singer on July 28, 1930 in the small role of lamp lighter in Manon Lescaut ; his official debut was a little later in August as Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni . In 1934 the decades-long tradition of open-air performances began in the Stockholm amusement parks Gröna Lund and Skansen .

In 1931 he had his first foreign appearance in Tivoli Copenhagen . His international career began in 1936 at the Vienna State Opera and in Prague. In the spring of 1937 a longer tour through Central Europe followed: again in Vienna and also in Germany (Nuremberg, Dresden and Deutsches Opernhaus Berlin). In autumn 1937 he was heard for the first time as a tenor in the USA ( Carnegie Hall New York); on November 24, 1938 he made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera as Rodolfo in La Bohème . For more than 20 years he was one of the leading tenors at the Met and sang - with the exception of the war years from 1941 - almost every year in the USA. He sang three times on the opening night of the Met (1940: Un ballo in maschera ; 1950: Don Carlos when Rudolf Bing took office ; 1953: Faust ).

Apart from Stockholm, appearances in other European opera houses remained the exception. In Germany, after the Second World War, he only sang in a RIAS broadcast in Berlin in 1950 and in Stuttgart ( La Bohème ) in 1954 .

From 1947 onwards, his wife Anna-Lisa, who was trained as a singer, was often a singing partner in concerts as well as in numerous opera performances.

End of career

In 1953 voice problems ( laryngitis ) appeared for the first time . In the years that followed, he suffered from a heart disease, so that he repeatedly had to forego appearances for some time for health reasons. Recordings from 1958 and 1959 show a decline in voice quality. In the summer of 1959 Björling had to go into long-term curative treatment. There was officially talk of an acute heart disease; only decades later did it leak out that it was also an alcohol withdrawal. Björling, always plagued by self-doubt, had increasingly resorted to alcohol in order, as the soprano Elisabeth Söderström reported, to withstand the enormous pressure of expectations from the audience.

From November 16 to December 22, 1959 ( Cavalleria rusticana ) he sang his last eight performances at the Met, some of them with acute heart problems during the performances. As can be heard in live recordings, however, his voice is excellent. After another recovery period, Björling returned to the stage in the spring of 1960. During his appearance as Manrico in Verdi's Troubadour at the Royal Opera in Stockholm in early March, the singer presented himself with an almost youthful, fresh, completely slag-free voice (as can be heard in a live recording). On March 15, shortly before a performance of La Bohème at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, which the Queen Mother attended , he suffered a heart attack, but was determined to sing the role for "Queen Mom". He must have been well aware that he was playing with his life, because only a few days earlier his frequent baritone partner Leonard Warren had died of a heart attack on the open stage of the Met during a performance of La forza del destino .

During this time concrete plans began for his first appearance in Verdi's Otello . In 1951 he and his long-time stage partner Robert Merrill recorded the so-called oath duet from this opera, which has gone down in record history as a reference recording. In June 1960 he sang with Leontyne Price for recordings (under Fritz Reiner ) in Verdi's Requiem . In the summer he again gave the public concerts in Sweden, which were attended by large crowds. It can be assumed that here, too, his health suffered, so that he had to withdraw again, and this time for good, and died a few weeks later.

Afterlife and effect

His life and career are described in the biography "Jussi" by his widow Anna-Lisa (died in November 2006) in cooperation with Andrew Farkas in all ups and downs.

The city of Borlänge has set up a museum for its famous son with many documents from his life as well as a museum shop: according to John Steane, the English music critic, the best singer's museum in the world (Gramophone 12/2004).

In Germany Björling remained largely unknown to the general public during his lifetime. He particularly valued singers like Mario del Monaco and Giuseppe Di Stefano , who embodied genuine Italian temperament and Italian singing skills. A Scandinavian, on the other hand, was generally not trusted to be able to sing Verdi or Puccini with the same passion. The fact that they could be heard on records with the two great rival prima donnas Maria Callas and Renata Tebaldi may also have contributed to the greater fame of the two Italians. Björling sang mostly with Met top artists Zinka Milanov , Robert Merrill and Leonard Warren.

Björling actually only received the recognition in Germany after his death (and here after the introduction of the CD) that he had in the Anglo-Saxon countries during his lifetime: to have been one of the leading singers of the 20th century.

Voice and repertoire

“The voice was of outstanding quality. It had the intrinsic charm of an unmistakable silvery timbre and, with medium volume, great sonic power and a wonderfully easy-to-use treble. He was able to attack B, C, and even the C sharp without a start: The tones came as if they had been tipped off a springboard. ”(Quoted from Jürgen Kesting , Die Große Sänger)

Björling undoubtedly had one of the most beautiful voices of the 20th century. He was praised for his great musicality and his perfect technique, with which he could sing the highest notes seemingly effortless. His only weakness is considered to be his poor representational talent. In addition to Jussi's character disposition (he is described by his friends as rather shy and reserved), father Björling may also have had some influence here, who is said to have placed the highest value on clean vocal performance in the education of his boys. Many singing partners and critics note that Björling acted with his voice, and it is no coincidence that the Westdeutsche Rundfunk Köln titled a commemorative broadcast about him with 'Embers under the ice'. Elisabeth Söderström used to say that you used to sing better on stage next to Björling, so his masterful singing style rubbed off.

Jussi Björling is one of the few singers of the 20th century who was unreservedly recognized and appreciated by the professional world as well as by a wide audience - especially in the USA, but not in Germany. There shouldn't be a tenor, especially in the Italian field, who didn't use Jussi Björling as a guide for intonation and brilliant voice guidance, from Pavarotti to Joseph Calleja.

Björling has verifiably (source: Jussi Björling Museum Borlänge) over 2,000 public appearances and has sung in over 900 opera performances (660 of them at the Royal Stockholm Opera and 119 at the Met). His repertoire comprised 55 games and was almost exclusively developed in the years before his world career. After the Second World War he only added "Don Carlo" (1950 at the opening performance of Rudolf Bing as General Manager of the Met) and "Manon Lescaut" (1949). In his few recordings from the German repertoire, he sang either in Swedish (portrait aria from "Die Zauberflöte" or the Grail story from "Lohengrin") or in international Italian for "Ach so pious" from "Martha".

In the times of his world career, he has limited himself to about a dozen games. The operas of the Italian repertoire are mostly available in studio recordings, those of the French repertoire only in live recordings from the Met.

Björling was also a very active lieder singer. There were only a few tenors in his time, the concert programs with songs by German and Scandinavian composers with one or the other opera aria as a concession to the audience or as 'encore'. In this category there are also some recordings by Björling sung in German (including the recording of Beethoven's "Adelaide" from 1939, which was highly praised by Jürgen Kesting ). Above all, it is a few Franz Schubert and Richard Strauss songs that the singer presents in a somewhat unidiomatic way, but with an incomparable atmosphere. In the summer of 1959 he had several songs by these two composers in his program at his open-air concerts in Gröna Lund (the last studio recordings of German songs are from 1952).

Discography

There are only a few singers who have such extensive sound documentation over their entire duration. Björling experienced the development of recording technology from funnel to stereophony "up close". During his first recordings in 1920 as a boy soprano, he and his brothers - like Caruso at one time - had to sing into the bell for shellac records using the acoustic recording system. As a young tenor he sang with the microphone using the electrical method (also for shellac records) (he had already had experience with the microphone a year earlier in his first radio broadcast in March 1928). A few years before his death, when stereophony was introduced, he was one of the first to sing using this new method.

His first published recording (Torna a Surriento by de Curtis) is dated December 18, 1929, the first operatic recording is from May 12, 1930 (Ah! Lève-toi soleil from "Roméo et Juliette"). So both were already before his first stage appearance at the tender age of 18 respectively. Made 19 years. He had several recording sessions a year regularly in the early 1930s; in 1932/33 even ten hits were released under the pseudonym 'Erik Odde'.

Jussi Björling's grave in Stora Tuna

In December 1936, the first opera recordings were made in the Italian original language to support his international career. Björling was the first Swedish singer to receive a contract for the world catalog of 'His Master's Voice'. In 1952 the first complete opera recording ("Il Trovatore") was made with him, now by his new contractor RCA. New complete recordings followed almost every year; some of them (e.g. "Aida", "La Bohème", "I Pagliacci" and especially "Il Trovatore") have been named by critics as recordings for the famous 'lonely island'. In addition, arias and songs were recorded on a regular basis. In 1959 he received the Grammy for his solo album 'Björling in Opera'.

All studio productions of complete opera recordings with Björling at RCA (and the later ones at EMI and DECCA) were published on the German market - mostly shortly after their recording - as were a number of his recitals. Live recordings of his performances at the Met and other live material were mostly available through import services.

After his death "In-Memorium" records from his previous contractors as well as a lot of material with Swedish songs and from his live performances in Gröna Lund appeared from time to time (mainly through: Bluebell of Sweden). In 1968 the GDR record label Eterna released an LP with recordings by Björling, primarily from Italian operas; he sang some of the titles in Swedish (Eterna 8 20 829). The number of commercially available recordings decreased over time and at the end of the vinyl era there was only one record album by Björling on the German market; Significantly, it came from a company outside the market: Ullstein-Verlag.

After the introduction of the CD, the situation changed completely. In addition to the studio recordings of the singer, almost all of the live recordings have been published today, even if they are not always available in stores (but can be obtained from abroad and appropriate mailing services). The live recordings include "Un ballo in maschera" and "Roméo et Juliette", two of Björling's 'favorites', of which there are no studio productions with him.

Björling is hardly missing in one of the many compilations à la 'Great Voices of the Past' or 'Legendary Tenors'. Last but not least, the tenor-baritone duets with his long-time partner at the Metropolitan Opera , Robert Merrill from "The Power of Fate", "Don Carlo", "Otello", "La Bohème" and "Die", which are described as exemplary, enjoy great popularity Perlenfischer "('Au fond du temple saint' was also inducted into the 'Hall of Fame').

Trivia

Björling is still extremely popular in Sweden. Henning Mankell's commissioner Wallander keeps hearing recordings of Björling, who lived for some time at Wallander's place of work in Ystad ; Mankell even called Wallander's dog "Jussi".

The Danish writer Jussi Adler-Olsen , whose real name is Carl Valdemar Henry Adler-Olsen, owes his first name to Björling. Since Adler-Olsen was three months old, he was called Jussi, after the famous opera singer Jussi Björling, who was greatly admired by his mother. Jussi Adler-Olsen tells the following anecdote on his German website:

" When I was six years old and was about to start school, my father took me aside one day and said," Jussi, you should be aware that when they say Carl at school, they mean you. " Little did I know that was my name. I completely broke down over it and refused to go to school. So I got a king's letter and came to be called Jussi. And since then I've only called myself that. "

- Jussi Adler-Olsen

literature

• Anna-Lisa Björling, Andrew Farkas: Jussi . Amadeus Press, Portland, Or. 1997, ISBN 1-57467-010-7 .
• Yrsa Stenius, Tills vingen brister: en bok om Jussi Björling . Brombergs, Stockholm 2002, ISBN 91-7608-904-5 .
• Henning Mehnert: "J. Björling on the 30th anniversary of his death (1990) ", in: Yearbook of the opera world 1990.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ According to birth certificate; the midwife named February 5th as the date of birth, see biography ( Memento from June 17th 2013 in the Internet Archive )
2. ↑ Interview with Adler-Olsen

Web links

• Literature by and about Jussi Björling in the catalog of the German National Library
• Jussi Björling Society (Swedish and English)
• Sound recordings with Jussi Björling in the Internet Archive - arias from Il trovatore , La fanciulla del West , Rigoletto , Tosca and La forza del destino