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Jean de Reszke, born Jan Mieczyslaw, (14 January 1850 – 3 April 1925) was a Polish tenor. He enjoyed international renown for the quality of his singing and the elegance of his bearing and he became the biggest male opera star of the late 19th century.
Biography
He was born in Warsaw in 1850. His parents were Poles; his father was a state official and his mother a capable amateur singer, their house being a recognized musical centre.
After singing as a boy in the cathedral of Warsaw, he studied law at the University there, but in a few years he abandoned this and went to Milan in Italy to study singing. He made his first public appearance, as a baritone, in Venice in January 1874, as Alfonso in La Favorita, and in the following April he sang for the first time in London, appearing at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and a little later in Paris.
He was not entirely successful as a baritone and retired for a further period of study, during which time his voice gained remarkably in the upper register; so that when he made his first reappearance at Madrid in 1879 it was as a tenor, in the title-role of Robert le Diable. Jean de Reszke's great fame as a singer dates from this time. For several seasons he sang regularly in Paris, and he reappeared at Drury Lane in 1887 as Radames. In the next year he was again in London, this time at Covent Garden as Vasco da Gama; this appearance was mainly responsible for the revival of the opera as a fashionable amusement in London. He appeared in London nearly every year from this date until 1900. In 1891 he visited America, and from 1893 to 1899 he was welcomed each year at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. Jean de Reszke's most successful parts were the title-role of Le Cid, which was written for him by Massenet, and those of Faust, Romeo, Lancelot in Elaine, and Lohengrin, Walther von Stolzing, Siegfried and Tristan in Wagner's operas.
In 1904, illness compelled de Reszke to retire from the stage and Enrico Caruso, 23 years his junior, took up his mantle as the world's most famous tenor. De Reszke subsequently divided his time between teaching singing in Paris and Nice -- his pupils included Bidù Sayão, Louise Edvina, Claire Croiza and Maggie Teyte -- and breeding racehorses in Poland. The prominent Austrian tenor Leo Slezak also polished his vocal technique with de Reszke in 1908-1909.
Noted for his ability to combine a virile, heroic singing style with a high degree of elegance, charm and refinement, de Reszke is widely considered to be one of the very greatest tenors of all time. It is therefore highly unfortunate that the release of his two commercial gramophone records, made in Paris in 1905, never took place as intended. The matrices and test pressings appear to have been destroyed when de Reszke expressed his disappointment with the results. (Rumours of the survival of one of these records, current in the 1950s, are to be discounted). Only a handful of Mapleson Cylinders (primitive 'live' recordings, executed during actual performances at the New York Metropolitan Opera in 1901) exist to give us a faint glimpse of him at work.
Jean de Reszke's younger brother, Edouard de Reszke, born in Warsaw on 22 December 1853, was also internationally famous as an operatic singer, in the basso range. He appeared for the first time in Paris in April 1876 in Aida, and sang with his brother for many seasons in London and New York. The two were brothers of soprano Josephine de Reszke.
Appearances at the Royal Opera House
Gala performances by Jean and Edouard de Reszke at Covent Garden and Command Performances at Windsor Castle
References
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