Lawrence Winters
Lawrence Winters (actually Lawrence Whisonant ; born November 12, 1915 in Kings Creek , South Carolina ; † September 24, 1965 in Hamburg ) was an American opera singer (baritone).
Life
Winters was of African American descent and studied music at Howard University in Washington, DC After graduating, he began his career as a singer in Eva Jessye's choir . After first leading roles in operas and musicals, he became music director in the American military. He made his concert debut in 1947. In 1948 he was seen for the first time in the role of Amonasro in Giuseppe Verdi's Aida at the New York Opera. In the following years he toured North and South America and Europe both as a singer and as a musical performer. In 1951 he played the Porgy in Porgy and Bess in the first production of this opera by George Gershwin , which was fully recorded. Winters also recorded records as a solo singer, a. a. also titles in German. Winter was able to place himself twice in the German singles charts: in 1956, Drei Münzen im Brunnen , the German version of Frank Sinatra's Three Coins In The Fountain , reached number 10, and in 1963 the song Together, for each other, reached number 29 at the end of the 1950s Admitted to the Hamburg Freemasons Lodge Die Brückenbauer. In 1961 he became a member of the Hamburg State Opera and remained so until his death in 1965.
His grave is in the Ohlsdorf cemetery in Hamburg .
literature
- Winters, Lawrence. In: Karl-Josef Kutsch , Leo Riemens : Large singer lexicon . 3rd edition, 1997-2000, Vol. 5, 3741 f.
Web links
- Klaus Ulrich Spiegel: “A stranger I arrived” - harbinger, bridgehammer , idol: the baritone Lawrence Winters on ku-spiegel.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ehnert, Günter (Ed.): Hit balance sheet. German chart singles 1956-1980 . Hamburg: Taurus Press, 1990, p. 220
- ↑ Freemasons in 60 minutes (blog): From think tanks and bridge builders: Axel Springer and his Masonic secret - a prominent lesson ?; Access: May 2, 2012 ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Winters, Lawrence |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Whisonant, Lawrence (real name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American opera singer (baritone) |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 12, 1915 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Kings Creek , South Carolina |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 24, 1965 |
| Place of death | Hamburg |