Leon Rains
Eleazer Leon Rains , also Léon Rains , ( October 1, 1870 in New York - June 11, 1954 in Los Angeles ) was an American opera singer ( bass ), actor and vocal teacher .
Life
As a child he sang as a choirboy in the choirs of Calvary Church and the Church of the Incarnation in New York. When he was twelve he entered the stage of the New York Star Theater for the first time.
Rains studied at the National Conservatory in New York in 1890, which he left as a price student and was a student of Oscar Saenger . Then he went to Paris for further training with Jacques Bouhy . First he worked as a concert and oratorio singer in America and then spent two years with Frank Damrosch's troupe . There he worked as a serious bass player who sang his parts in Italian, German, French and English, always in the original text of the opera in question. The US critics described him as the most promising bass singer since Karl Formes .
On June 4, 1899 he made his debut as "Tannhäuser" in Dresden and stayed there until 1917. When the USA entered the First World War , he was forced to leave Germany for the USA. From 1917 to 1918 he worked in several silent films as an actor, a. a. Starring Joe Jenkins in four films as the detective , these films were all produced in Denmark, so it seems that he returned to his homeland via this country. Back in his home country he only worked as a concert singer. From 1924 he worked in Los Angeles as a singing teacher. He also worked as a cabinet maker and cabinet maker.
In Dresden he participated in several world premieres and made guest appearances in Berlin, Vienna, Prague, Frankfurt am Main etc. In 1909 he was a guest at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where he a. a. played the "Méphistophélès" in Gounod's Faust . sang. In 1904 he was at the Bayreuth Festival of "Hagen" in Götterdämmerung .
His voice was a particularly beautiful bass, especially in the higher registers: “The phrasing and nuances of the performance are mostly recognized. His timbre is no less praised, as is the metallic sound and the balance of his voice in the individual registers. "
literature
- Ludwig Eisenberg : Large biographical lexicon of the German stage in the XIX. Century . Verlag von Paul List , Leipzig 1903, p. 803, ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
Filmography
- 1916: Countess Heyers
- 1916: Kismet
- 1917: The man with the four feet
- 1917: The Harvard Premium
- 1917: The message of Jean Battista
- 1917: The man with the four feet
- 1917: incurable
- 1918: The black ball
- 1918: The star of the great opera
Web links
- Leon Rains in the SLUB Dresden
- Leon Rains at Operissimo on the basis of the Great Singer Lexicon
- Leon Rains at filmportal.de
- Leon Rains in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Leon Rains at The German Early Cinema Database
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Rains, Leon |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Rains, Eleazer Leon (full name); Rains, Léon |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American opera singer (bass), actor and vocal teacher |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 1, 1870 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | new York |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 11, 1954 |
| Place of death | los Angeles |