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112-578: Ruggiero Eugenio di Rodolfo Colombo (January 14, 1908 – September 2, 1934), known as Russ Columbo , was an American baritone , songwriter, violinist, and actor. He is famous for romantic ballads such as his signature tune "You Call It Madness, But I Call It Love" and his own compositions " Prisoner of Love " and "Too Beautiful for Words". Columbo was born in Camden, New Jersey , the twelfth child of Italian immigrant parents Nicola and Giulia "Julia" Colombo. He attended Everett Grammar School and started playing

224-546: A Vitaphone short in which Columbo appeared as a member of Gus Arnheim and His Orchestra. Eventually, he obtained some feature work in front of the camera, but he slowed down his activities in cinema to pursue other interests. At the time of his death, Columbo had just completed work on the film Wake Up and Dream ; he was on his way to stardom when his life was cut short. Among Columbo's other films are: Woman to Woman (with Betty Compton ), Wolf Song (with Lupe Vélez ), The Texan (with Gary Cooper ), and Broadway Thru

336-798: A forever stamp depicting Horne began to be issued; this made Horne the 41st honoree in the Black Heritage stamp series. In June 2021, the Prospect Park bandshell in Brooklyn was renamed the Lena Horne Bandshell to honor Horne, a Bed-Stuy Brooklyn native, and to show solidarity with the Black community. The Nederlander Organization announced in June 2022 that Broadway 's Brooks Atkinson Theatre would be renamed after her later that year. The theater's marquee

448-432: A 1993 appearance on A Different World . In the summer of 1980, Horne, 63 years old and intent on retiring from show business, embarked on a two-month series of benefit concerts sponsored by the sorority Delta Sigma Theta . These concerts were represented as Horne's farewell tour, yet her retirement lasted less than a year. On April 13, 1980, Horne, Luciano Pavarotti , and host Gene Kelly were all scheduled to appear at

560-416: A 2005 interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show that she might possibly consider producing the biopic herself, casting Keys as Horne. In January 2005, Blue Note Records , her label for more than a decade, announced that "the finishing touches have been put on a collection of rare and unreleased recordings by the legendary Horne made during her time on Blue Note." Remixed by her long-time producer Rodney Jones,

672-627: A Cotton Club-style revue on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood. Horne already had two low-budget movies to her credit: a musical feature called The Duke is Tops (1938, later reissued with Horne's name above the title as The Bronze Venus ); and a two-reel short subject, Boogie Woogie Dream (1941), featuring pianists Pete Johnson and Albert Ammons . Horne's songs from Boogie Woogie Dream were later released individually as soundies . Horne made her Hollywood nightclub debut at Felix Young's Little Troc on

784-549: A Dramatic Baritone with greater ease in the upper tessitura (Verdi Baritone roles center approximately a minor third higher). Because the Verdi Baritone is sometimes seen as a subset of the Dramatic Baritone, some singers perform roles from both sets of repertoire. Similarly, the lower tessitura of these roles allows them frequently to be sung by bass-baritones. Dramatic baritone roles in opera: The baryton-noble baritone

896-687: A Gala performance at the Metropolitan Opera House to salute the NY City Center's Joffrey Ballet Company . However, Pavarotti's plane was diverted over the Atlantic and he was unable to appear. James Nederlander was an invited Honored Guest and observed that only three people at the sold-out Metropolitan Opera House asked for their money back. He asked to be introduced to Horne following her performance. In May 1981, The Nederlander Organization , Michael Frazier, and Fred Walker went on to book Horne for

1008-569: A Keyhole . Columbo performed seven vocals while with Arnheim as a member of the string section, six for Okeh Records and only one for Victor ("A Peach of a Pair") on June 18, 1930, a few months before Bing Crosby joined the band along with Al Rinker and Harry Barris as "The Rhythm Boys". Columbo ran a nightclub for a while, the Club Pyramid, but gave it up when his manager told him he had star potential. In 1931, he traveled to New York City with his manager, songwriter Con Conrad , who secured

1120-583: A Negro who stands against a pillar singing a song. I did that 20 times too often." She was blacklisted during the 1950s for her affiliations in the 1940s with communist -backed groups. She would subsequently disavow communism. She returned to the screen, playing Claire Quintana, a madam in a brothel who marries Richard Widmark , in the film Death of a Gunfighter (1969), her first straight dramatic role with no reference to her color. She later appeared on screen two more times as Glinda in The Wiz (1978), which

1232-637: A Wagner specialist, sang John when the opera reached the Met in 1907). Then, in 1925, Germany's Leo Schützendorf created the title baritone role in Alban Berg 's harrowing Wozzeck . In a separate development, the French composer Claude Debussy 's post-Wagnerian masterpiece Pelléas et Mélisande featured not one but two lead baritones at its 1902 premiere. These two baritones, Jean Périer and Hector Dufranne , possessed contrasting voices. (Dufranne – sometimes classed as

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1344-503: A bass-baritone – had a darker, more powerful instrument than did Périer, who was a true baryton-Martin.) Characteristic of the Wagnerian baritones of the 20th century was a general progression of individual singers from higher-lying baritone parts to lower-pitched ones. This was the case with Germany's Hans Hotter . Hotter made his debut in 1929. As a young singer he appeared in Verdi and created

1456-499: A career lasting from 1935 to 1966, the Bolshoi 's Pavel Lisitsian . Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Sergei Leiferkus are two Russian baritones of the modern era who appear regularly in the West. Like Lisitsian, they sing Verdi and the works of their native composers, including Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades . In the realm of French song, the bass-baritone José van Dam and

1568-418: A distinguished, brighter-voiced Wagnerian rival during the 1960s, 70s, and 80s in the person of Thomas Stewart of America. Other notable post-War Wagnerian baritones have been Canada's George London , Germany's Hermann Uhde and, more recently, America's James Morris . Among the late-20th-century baritones noted throughout the opera world for their Verdi performances was Vladimir Chernov , who emerged from

1680-480: A four-week engagement at the newly named Nederlander Theatre on West 41st Street in New York City. The show was an instant success and was extended to a full year run, garnering Horne a special Tony award, and two Grammy Awards for the cast recording of her show Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music . The 333-performance Broadway run closed on Horne's 65th birthday, June 30, 1982. Later that same week, she performed

1792-739: A late-night radio slot with NBC . This led to numerous engagements, a recording contract with RCA Victor records, and tremendous popularity with legions of mostly female fans. Not long after arriving in New York, Columbo met actress Dorothy Dell at an audition for the Ziegfeld Follies and began seeing her. Conrad did his best to break the relationship up with a series of publicity-created "ruse romances" involving Columbo and actresses such as Greta Garbo and Pola Negri ; it succeeded. (Dorothy Dell died in an auto accident in June 1934—just months before Columbo's own fatal accident.) The type of singing that

1904-412: A longtime friend, photographer Lansing Brown Jr. , while Columbo was visiting him at home. Brown had a collection of firearms, and the two men were examining various pieces. Quoting Brown's description of the accident: I was absent-mindedly fooling around with one of the guns. It was of a dueling design and works with a cap and trigger. I was pulling back the trigger and clicking it time after time. I had

2016-550: A lyric baritone and with a darker quality. Its common range is from the G half an octave below low C to the G above middle C (G 2 to G 4 ). The dramatic baritone category corresponds roughly to the Heldenbariton in the German Fach system except that some Verdi baritone roles are not included. The primo passaggio and secondo passaggio of both the Verdi and dramatic baritone are at B ♭ and E ♭ respectively, hence

2128-416: A match in my hand and when I clicked, apparently the match caught in between the hammer and the firing pin. There was an explosion. Russ slid to the side of his chair. The ball ricocheted off a nearby table and hit Columbo above the left eye. Surgeons at Good Samaritan Hospital made an unsuccessful attempt to remove the ball from Columbo's brain; he died less than six hours after the shooting. Columbo's death

2240-568: A result, most of Horne's film appearances were stand-alone sequences that had no bearing on the rest of the film, so editing caused no disruption to the storyline. One number from Cabin in the Sky was cut before release because it was considered too suggestive by the censors: Horne singing "Ain't It the Truth" while taking a bubble bath. This scene and song are featured in the film That's Entertainment! III (1994), which also featured commentary from Horne on why

2352-488: A small but precious legacy of benchmark Handel recordings during the 1920s and 1930s. (Dawson, incidentally, acquired his outstanding Handelian technique from Sir Charles Santley.) Yet another Australian baritone of distinction between the wars was Harold Williams , who was based in the United Kingdom. Important British-born baritones of the 1930s and 1940s were Dennis Noble , who sang Italian and English operatic roles, and

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2464-428: A subset of the Dramatic Baritone. Its common range is from the G below low C to the B ♭ above middle C (G 2 to B ♭ 4 ). A Verdi baritone refers to a voice capable of singing consistently and with ease in the highest part of the baritone range. It will generally have a lot of squillo . Verdi baritone roles in opera: The dramatic baritone is a voice that is richer, fuller, and sometimes harsher than

2576-568: A television biographical film. In the weeks following Jackson's " wardrobe malfunction " debacle during the 2004 Super Bowl , however, Variety reported that Horne had demanded Jackson be dropped from the project. "ABC executives resisted Horne's demand", according to the Associated Press report, "but Jackson representatives told the trade newspaper that she left willingly after Horne and her daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, asked that she not take part." Oprah Winfrey stated to Alicia Keys during

2688-409: A tenor. Baryton-Martin roles in opera: The lyric baritone is a sweeter, milder sounding baritone voice, lacking in harshness; lighter and perhaps mellower than the dramatic baritone with a higher tessitura . Its common range is from the A below C 3 to the G above middle C (A 2 to G 4 ). It is typically assigned to comic roles. Lyric baritone roles in opera: The Kavalierbariton baritone

2800-529: A younger generation include Olaf Bär , Matthias Goerne , Wolfgang Holzmair and Johannes Sterkel (which are also performing or have performed regularly in opera), Thomas Quasthoff , Stephan Genz  [ de ] and Christian Gerhaher . Well-known non-Germanic baritones of recent times have included the Italians Giorgio Zancanaro and Leo Nucci , the Frenchman François le Roux ,

2912-694: Is French for "noble baritone" and describes a part that requires a noble bearing, smooth vocalisation and forceful declamation, all in perfect balance. This category originated in the Paris Opera , but it greatly influenced Verdi (Don Carlo in Ernani and La forza del destino ; Count Luna in Il trovatore ; Simon Boccanegra ) and Wagner as well ( Wotan ; Amfortas ). Similar to the Kavalierbariton. Baryton-noble roles in opera are: The bass-baritone range extends from

3024-553: Is Horne's granddaughter, the daughter of filmmaker Sidney Lumet and Horne's daughter Gail. Her other grandchildren include Gail's other daughter, Amy Lumet, and her son's four children, Thomas, William, Samadhi and Lena. Her great-grandchildren include Jake Cannavale . Horne was Catholic . From 1946 to 1962 she resided in St. Albans, Queens , New York, enclave of prosperous African Americans, where she counted among her neighbors Count Basie , Ella Fitzgerald and other jazz luminaries. In

3136-422: Is a metallic voice that can sing both lyric and dramatic phrases, a manly, noble baritonal color. Its common range is from the A below low C to the G above middle C (A 2 to G 4 ). Not quite as powerful as the Verdi baritone who is expected to have a powerful appearance on stage, perhaps muscular or physically large. Kavalierbariton roles in opera: The Verdi baritone is a more specialized voice category and

3248-404: Is often called the first true baritone role. However, Donizetti and Verdi in their vocal writing went on to emphasize the top fifth of the baritone voice, rather than its lower notes—thus generating a more brilliant sound. Further pathways opened up when the musically complex and physically demanding operas of Richard Wagner began to enter the mainstream repertory of the world's opera houses during

3360-588: The Bayreuth Festival in the 1890s; Giuseppe Campanari ; Antonio Magini-Coletti ; Mario Ancona (chosen to be the first Silvio in Pagliacci ); and Antonio Scotti , who came to the Met from Europe in 1899 and remained on the roster of singers until 1933. Antonio Pini-Corsi was the standout Italian buffo baritone in the period between about 1880 and World War I , reveling in comic opera roles by Rossini, Donizetti and Paer , among others. In 1893, he created

3472-787: The Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles, and the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. In 1957, a live album entitled, Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria , became the biggest-selling record by a female artist in the history of the RCA Victor label at that time. In 1958, Horne became the first African-American woman to be nominated for a Tony Award for "Best Actress in a Musical", for her part in the " Calypso " musical Jamaica (which, at Horne's request featured her longtime friend Adelaide Hall ). From

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3584-510: The Hill District of Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania . Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron, was an actress with a Black theatre troupe and traveled extensively. Edna's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was from modern Senegal . Horne had a paternal great-grandmother who was a Blackfoot Indian. Horne was raised mainly by her paternal grandparents, Cora Calhoun and Edwin Horne. When Horne

3696-480: The Ink Spots , Mildred Bailey , Tiny Tim , Teddy Wilson with Lena Horne on vocals, Bing Crosby, Billy Eckstine , and James Brown . Perry Como had a number-one hit on Billboard with his recording. James Brown had a top-20 pop hit and performed the song on The Ed Sullivan Show and in the concert movie The T.A.M.I. Show (1964). On Sunday, September 2, 1934, Columbo was shot under peculiar circumstances by

3808-579: The Sunset Strip in January 1942. A few weeks later, she was signed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer . In November 1944, she was featured in an episode of the popular radio series Suspense , as a fictional nightclub singer, with a large speaking role along with her singing. In 1945 and 1946, she sang with Billy Eckstine 's Orchestra. She made her debut at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in Panama Hattie (1942) and performed

3920-517: The fifth above the bass root) and to complete a chord. On the other hand, the baritone will occasionally find himself harmonizing above the melody, which calls for a tenor-like quality. Because the baritone fills the chord, the part is often not very melodic. Lena Horne Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010) was an American singer, actress, dancer and civil rights activist. Horne's career spanned more than seventy years and covered film, television and theatre. Horne joined

4032-585: The gramophone was invented early enough to capture on disc the voices of the top Italian Verdi and Donizetti baritones of the last two decades of the 19th century, whose operatic performances were characterized by considerable re-creative freedom and a high degree of technical finish. They included Mattia Battistini (known as the "King of Baritones"), Giuseppe Kaschmann (born Josip Kašman ) who, atypically, sang Wagner's Telramund and Amfortas not in Italian but in German, at

4144-473: The title song of Stormy Weather (1943) based loosely on the life of Adelaide Hall , for 20th Century Fox , while on loan from MGM. She appeared in several MGM musicals , including Cabin in the Sky (1943) with an entirely African-American cast. She was otherwise not featured in a leading role because of her ethnicity and the fact that her films were required to be re-edited for showing in cities where theaters would not show films with Black performers. As

4256-433: The 15th century, usually in French sacred polyphonic music. At this early stage it was frequently used as the lowest of the voices (including the bass), but in 17th-century Italy the term was all-encompassing and used to describe the average male choral voice. Baritones took roughly the range as it is known today at the beginning of the 18th century, but they were still lumped in with their bass colleagues until well into

4368-700: The 1980s, she moved into the fifth floor of the Volney, a hotel-turned-co-op, at 23 East 74th Street . Lena Horne died of congestive heart failure at age 92 on May 9, 2010. Her funeral took place at St. Ignatius Loyola Church on Park Avenue in New York, where she had been a member. Thousands gathered and attendees included: Leontyne Price , Dionne Warwick , Liza Minnelli , Jessye Norman , Chita Rivera , Cicely Tyson , Diahann Carroll , Leslie Uggams , Lauren Bacall , Robert Osborne , Audra McDonald , and Vanessa Williams . Her remains were cremated. In 2003, ABC announced that Janet Jackson would star as Horne in

4480-567: The 19th century although, generally speaking, his operas were not revered to the same extent that they are today by music critics and audiences. Back then, baritones rather than high basses normally sang Don Giovanni – arguably Mozart's greatest male operatic creation. Famous Dons of the late 19th and early 20th centuries included Scotti and Maurel, as well as Portugal's Francisco D'Andrade and Sweden's John Forsell . The verismo baritone, Verdi baritone, and other subtypes are mentioned below, though not necessarily in 19th-century context. The dawn of

4592-778: The 19th century. Many operatic works of the 18th century have roles marked as bass that in reality are low baritone roles (or bass-baritone parts in modern parlance). Examples of this are to be found, for instance, in the operas and oratorios of George Frideric Handel . The greatest and most enduring parts for baritones in 18th-century operatic music were composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart . They include Count Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro , Guglielmo in Così fan tutte , Papageno in The Magic Flute and Don Giovanni . In theatrical documents, cast lists, and journalistic dispatches that from

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4704-962: The 20th century opened up more opportunities for baritones than ever before as a taste for strenuously exciting vocalism and lurid, "slice-of-life" operatic plots took hold in Italy and spread elsewhere. The most prominent verismo baritones included such major singers in Europe and America as the polished Giuseppe De Luca (the first Sharpless in Madama Butterfly ), Mario Sammarco (the first Gerard in Andrea Chénier ), Eugenio Giraldoni (the first Scarpia in Tosca ), Pasquale Amato (the first Rance in La fanciulla del West ), Riccardo Stracciari (noted for his richly attractive timbre ) and Domenico Viglione Borghese , whose voice

4816-562: The American-born but also Paris-based baritone of the 1920s, and 1930s Arthur Endreze . Also to be found singing Verdi roles at the Met, Covent Garden and the Vienna Opera during the late 1930s and the 1940s was the big-voiced Hungarian baritone, Sandor (Alexander) Sved . The leading Verdi baritones of the 1970s and 1980s were probably Italy's Renato Bruson and Piero Cappuccilli , America's Sherrill Milnes , Sweden's Ingvar Wixell and

4928-556: The Canadians Gerald Finley and James Westman and the versatile American Thomas Hampson , his compatriot Nathan Gunn and the Englishman Simon Keenlyside . The vocal range of the baritone lies between the bass and the tenor voice types . The baritone vocal range is usually between the second G below middle C (G 2 ) and the G above middle C (G 4 ). Composers typically write music for this voice in

5040-566: The Clouds Roll By , but lost the part to Ava Gardner , a friend in real life. Horne claimed this was due to the Production Code 's ban on interracial relationships in films, although MGM sources state she was never considered for the role. In the documentary That's Entertainment! III, Horne stated that MGM executives required Gardner to practice her singing using Horne's recordings, which offended both actresses. Ultimately, Gardner's voice

5152-666: The Commandant in Richard Strauss's Friedenstag and Olivier in Capriccio . By the 1950s, however, he was being hailed as the top Wagnerian bass-baritone in the world. His Wotan was especially praised by critics for its musicianship. Other major Wagnerian baritones have included Hotter's predecessors Leopold Demuth , Anton van Rooy, Hermann Weil , Clarence Whitehill , Friedrich Schorr , Rudolf Bockelmann and Hans-Hermann Nissen . Demuth, van Rooy, Weil and Whitehill were at their peak in

5264-707: The DNC Margaret B. Price , and Secretary of the DNC Dorothy Vredenburgh Bush , visited John F. Kennedy at The White House , two days prior to his assassination. Horne married Louis Jordan Jones, a political operative, in January 1937 in Pittsburgh . On December 21, 1937, their daughter, Gail (1937–2024), was born. They had a son, Edwin Jones (1940–1970), who died of kidney disease . Horne and Jones separated in 1940 and divorced in 1944. Horne's second marriage

5376-413: The F below low C to the F or F ♯ above middle C (F 2 to F 4 or F ♯ 4 ). Bass-baritones are typically divided into two separate categories: lyric bass-baritone and dramatic bass-baritone. Lyric bass-baritone roles in opera include: Dramatic bass-baritone roles in opera include: All of Gilbert and Sullivan 's Savoy operas have at least one lead baritone character (frequently

5488-462: The London production in 1864 so that the leading baritone would have an aria. A couple of primitive cylinder recordings dating from about 1900 have been attributed by collectors to the dominant French baritone of the 1860s and 1870s, Jean-Baptiste Faure (1830–1914), the creator of Posa in Verdi's original French-language version of Don Carlos . It is doubtful, however, that Faure (who retired in 1886) made

5600-466: The Mozartian Roy Henderson . Both appeared often at Covent Garden. Prior to World War II, Germany's Heinrich Schlusnus, Gerhard Hüsch and Herbert Janssen were celebrated for their beautifully sung lieder recitals as well as for their mellifluous operatic performances in Verdi, Mozart, and Wagner respectively. After the war's conclusion, Hermann Prey and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau appeared on

5712-843: The Priest of Dagon in Samson and Delilah , Escamillo in Carmen , Zurga in Les pêcheurs de perles , Lescaut in Manon , Athanael in Thaïs and Herod in Hérodiade . Russian composers included substantial baritone parts in their operas. Witness the title roles in Peter Tchaikovsky 's Eugene Onegin (which received its first production in 1879) and Alexander Borodin 's Prince Igor (1890). Mozart continued to be sung throughout

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5824-481: The Romanian baritone Nicolae Herlea . At the same time, Britain's Sir Thomas Allen was considered to be the most versatile baritone of his generation in regards to repertoire, which ranged from Mozart to Verdi and lighter Wagner roles, through French and Russian opera, to modern English music. Another British baritone, Norman Bailey , established himself internationally as a memorable Wotan and Hans Sachs. However, he had

5936-761: The Spanish-speaking countries, the United States and the United Kingdom, and in Germany, where there was a major Verdi revival in Berlin between the wars. Outside the field of Italian opera, an important addition to the Austro-German repertory occurred in 1905. This was the premiere of Richard Strauss 's Salome , with the pivotal part of John the Baptist assigned to a baritone. (The enormous-voiced Dutch baritone Anton van Rooy ,

6048-520: The U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she staged her show for a mixed audience of Black U.S. soldiers and white German POWs. Seeing the Black soldiers had been forced to sit in the back seats, she walked off the stage to the first row where the Black troops were seated and performed with the Germans behind her. However, the USO observed at the time of her death that Horne did in fact tour "extensively with

6160-435: The U.S. and U.K. in a show together. In the 1976 program America Salutes Richard Rodgers , she sang a lengthy medley of Rodgers songs with Peggy Lee and Vic Damone . Horne also made several appearances on The Flip Wilson Show . Additionally, Horne played herself on television programs such as The Muppet Show , Sesame Street , and Sanford and Son in the 1970s, as well as a 1985 performance on The Cosby Show and

6272-481: The U.S.), Horne starred in her own U.S. television special in 1969, Monsanto Night Presents Lena Horne . During this decade, the artist Pete Hawley painted her portrait for RCA Victor, capturing the mood of her performance style. In 1970, she co-starred with Harry Belafonte in the hour-long Harry & Lena special for ABC; in 1973, she co-starred with Tony Bennett in Tony and Lena . Horne and Bennett subsequently toured

6384-501: The USO during WWII on the West Coast and in the South". The organization also commemorated her for the appearances she made on Armed Forces Radio Service programs Jubilee , G.I. Journal , and Command Performances . In the film Stormy Weather (1943), Horne's character would perform the film's title song as part of a big, all-star show for World War II soldiers as well. After quitting

6496-674: The USO in 1945, Horne financed tours of military camps herself. Horne was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi , the weekend before Evers was assassinated. At the March on Washington she spoke and performed on behalf of the NAACP, S.N.C.C. , and the National Council of Negro Women . She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt in attempts to pass anti- lynching laws. Tom Lehrer mentions her in his song "National Brotherhood Week" in

6608-412: The bass-baritone. The baryton-Martin baritone (sometimes referred to as light baritone) lacks the lower G 2 –B 2 range a heavier baritone is capable of, and has a lighter, almost tenor-like quality. Its common range is from C 3 to the B above middle C (C 3 to B 4 ). Generally seen only in French repertoire, this Fach was named after the French singer Jean-Blaise Martin . Associated with

6720-473: The beginning of the 19th century till the mid 1820s, the terms primo basso , basse chantante , and basse-taille were often used for men who would later be called baritones. These included the likes of Filippo Galli , Giovanni Inchindi , and Henri-Bernard Dabadie . The basse-taille and the proper bass were commonly confused because their roles were sometimes sung by singers of either actual voice part. The bel canto style of vocalism which arose in Italy in

6832-419: The best known Italian Verdi baritones of the 1920s and 1930s, Mariano Stabile , sang Iago and Rigoletto and Falstaff (at La Scala ) under the baton of Arturo Toscanini . Stabile also appeared in London, Chicago and Salzburg. He was noted more for his histrionic skills than for his voice, however. Stabile was followed by Tito Gobbi , a versatile singing actor capable of vivid comic and tragic performances during

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6944-461: The chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving on to Hollywood and Broadway . A groundbreaking African-American performer, Horne advocated for civil rights and took part in the March on Washington in August 1963. Later she returned to her roots as a nightclub performer and continued to work on television while releasing well-received record albums. She announced her retirement in March 1980, but

7056-521: The color barrier in show business, but "learned to love him very much". Horne had affairs with long-time heavyweight champion Joe Louis , musician and actor Artie Shaw , actor Orson Welles , and director Vincente Minnelli . Horne also had a long and close relationship with Billy Strayhorn , whom she said she would have married if he had been heterosexual. He was also an important professional mentor to her. Screenwriter Jenny Lumet , known for her award-winning screenplay Rachel Getting Married ,

7168-433: The comic principal). Notable operetta roles are: In barbershop music , the baritone part sings in a similar range to the lead (singing the melody) however usually singing lower than the lead. A barbershop baritone has a specific and specialized role in the formation of the four-part harmony that characterizes the style. The baritone singer is often the one required to support or "fill" the bass sound (typically by singing

7280-461: The cylinders. However, a contemporary of Faure's, Antonio Cotogni, (1831–1918)—probably the foremost Italian baritone of his generation—can be heard, briefly and dimly, at the age of 77, on a duet recording with the tenor Francesco Marconi . (Cotogni and Marconi had sung together in the first London performance of Amilcare Ponchielli 's La Gioconda in 1883, performing the roles of Barnaba and Enzo respectively.) There are 19th-century references in

7392-399: The differentiation is based more heavily on timbre and tessitura. Accordingly, roles that fall into this category tend to have a slightly lower tessitura than typical Verdi baritone roles, only rising above an F at the moments of greatest intensity. Many of the Puccini roles fall into this category. However, it is important to note that, for all intents and purposes, a Verdi Baritone is simply

7504-464: The early 19th century supplanted the castrato -dominated opera seria of the previous century. It led to the baritone being viewed as a separate voice category from the bass. Traditionally, basses in operas had been cast as authority figures such as a king or high priest; but with the advent of the more fluid baritone voice, the roles allotted by composers to lower male voices expanded in the direction of trusted companions or even romantic leads—normally

7616-424: The entire show again to record it for television broadcast and home video release. Horne began a tour a few days later at Tanglewood (Massachusetts) during the weekend of July 4, 1982. The Lady and Her Music toured 41 cities in the U.S. and Canada until June 17, 1984. It played in London for a month in August and ended its run in Stockholm, Sweden , September 14, 1984. In 1981, she received a Special Tony Award for

7728-587: The fall of 1933, Horne joined the chorus line of the Cotton Club in New York City. In the spring of 1934, she had a featured role in the Cotton Club Parade starring Adelaide Hall , who took Lena under her wing. Horne made her first screen appearance as a dancer in the musical short Cab Calloway's Jitterbug Party (1935). A few years later, Horne joined Noble Sissle 's Orchestra, with which she toured and with whom she made her first records, issued by Decca . After she separated from her first husband, Horne toured with bandleader Charlie Barnet in 1940–41, but disliked

7840-503: The first Der Ring des Nibelungen cycle at Bayreuth , while Reichmann created Amfortas in Parsifal , also at Bayreuth. Lyric German baritones sang lighter Wagnerian roles such as Wolfram in Tannhäuser , Kurwenal in Tristan und Isolde or Telramund in Lohengrin . They made large strides, too, in the performance of art song and oratorio, with Franz Schubert favouring several baritones for his vocal music, in particular Johann Michael Vogl . Nineteenth-century operettas became

7952-585: The first famous American baritone appeared in the 1900s. It was the American-born but Paris-based Charles W. Clark who sang Italian, French and German composers. An outstanding group of virile-voiced American baritones appeared then in the 1920s. The younger members of this group were still active as recently as the late 1970s. Outstanding among its members were the Met-based Verdians Lawrence Tibbett (a compelling, rich-voiced singing actor), Richard Bonelli , John Charles Thomas , Robert Weede , Leonard Warren and Robert Merrill . They sang French opera, too, as did

8064-613: The first magnitude). Lassalle, Maurel and Renaud enjoyed superlative careers on either side of the Atlantic and left a valuable legacy of recordings. Five other significant Francophone baritones who recorded, too, during the early days of the gramophone/phonograph were Léon Melchissédec and Jean Noté of the Paris Opera and Gabriel Soulacroix , Henry Albers and Charles Gilibert of the Opéra-Comique. The Quaker baritone David Bispham , who sang in London and New York between 1891 and 1903,

8176-422: The former USSR to sing at the Met. Chernov followed in the footsteps of such richly endowed East European baritones as Ippolit Pryanishnikov (a favorite of Tchaikovski's), Joachim Tartakov (an Everardi pupil), Oskar Kamionsky (an exceptional bel canto singer nicknamed the "Russian Battistini"), Waclaw Brzezinski (known as the "Polish Battistini"), Georges Baklanoff (a powerful singing actor), and, during

8288-457: The group Clang. Columbo is one of the historical figures named in the Neil Diamond composition " Done Too Soon ". Columbo is one of the three famous crooners named in the 1932 Looney Tunes cartoon Crosby, Columbo, and Vallee . Crooner Andy Russell 's artistic name was adapted from Columbo's first name. Baritone The first use of the term "baritone" emerged as baritonans , late in

8400-508: The late 1950s through to the 1960s, Horne was a staple of TV variety shows, appearing multiple times on Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall , The Ed Sullivan Show , The Dean Martin Show , and The Bell Telephone Hour . Other programs she appeared on included The Judy Garland Show , The Hollywood Palace , and The Andy Williams Show . Besides two television specials for the BBC (later syndicated in

8512-1006: The late 19th and early 20th centuries while Schorr, Bockelmann and Nissen were stars of the 1920s and 1930s. In addition to their heavyweight Wagnerian cousins, there was a plethora of baritones with more lyrical voices active in Germany and Austria during the period between the outbreak of WW1 in 1914 and the end of WW2 in 1945. Among them were Joseph Schwarz  [ de ] , Heinrich Schlusnus , Herbert Janssen , Willi Domgraf-Fassbaender , Karl Schmitt-Walter and Gerhard Hüsch . Their abundant inter-war Italian counterparts included, among others, Carlo Galeffi , Giuseppe Danise , Enrico Molinari , Umberto Urbano , Cesare Formichi , Luigi Montesanto , Apollo Granforte , Benvenuto Franci , Renato Zanelli (who switched to tenor roles in 1924), Mario Basiola , Giovanni Inghilleri , Carlo Morelli (the Chilean-born younger brother of Renato Zanelli) and Carlo Tagliabue , who retired as late as 1958. One of

8624-503: The lighter-voiced Gérard Souzay have been notable. Souzay's repertoire extended from the Baroque works of Jean-Baptiste Lully to 20th-century composers such as Francis Poulenc . Pierre Bernac , Souzay's teacher, was an interpreter of Poulenc's songs in the previous generation. Older baritones identified with this style include France's Dinh Gilly and Charles Panzéra and Australia's John Brownlee . Another Australian, Peter Dawson , made

8736-587: The line "Lena Horne and Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her and to Sheriff Jim Clark , of Selma, Alabama , who was responsible for a violent attack on civil rights marchers in 1965. In 1983, the NAACP awarded her the Spingarn Medal . Horne was a registered Democrat and on November 20, 1963, she, along with Democratic National Committee (D.N.C.) Chairman John Bailey , Carol Lawrence , Richard Adler , Sidney Salomon , Vice-chairwoman of

8848-518: The musical literature to certain baritone subtypes. These include the light and tenorish baryton-Martin, named after French singer Jean-Blaise Martin (1768/69–1837), and the deeper, more powerful Heldenbariton (today's bass-baritone) of Wagnerian opera. Perhaps the most accomplished Heldenbaritons of Wagner's day were August Kindermann , Franz Betz and Theodor Reichmann . Betz created Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger and undertook Wotan in

8960-565: The next year starred in a one-woman show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music , which ran for more than 300 performances on Broadway. She then toured the country in the show, earning numerous awards and accolades. Horne continued recording and performing sporadically into the 1990s, retreating from the public eye in 2000. Lena Horne was born in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn to Edwin and Edna Horne on June 30, 1917. Both sides of her family were biracial African Americans . She belonged to

9072-611: The non-Italian born baritones that were active in the third quarter of the 19th century, Tamburini's mantle as an outstanding exponent of Mozart and Donizetti's music was probably taken up most faithfully by a Belgian, Camille Everardi , who later settled in Russia and taught voice. In France, Paul Barroilhet succeeded Dabadie as the Paris opera's best known baritone. Like Dabadie, he also sang in Italy and created an important Donizetti role: in his case, Alphonse in La favorite (in 1840). Luckily,

9184-505: The part of Ford in Verdi's last opera, Falstaff . Notable among their contemporaries were the cultured and technically adroit French baritones Jean Lassalle (hailed as the most accomplished baritone of his generation), Victor Maurel (the creator of Verdi's Iago, Falstaff and Tonio in Leoncavallo 's Pagliacci ), Paul Lhérie (the first Posa in the revised, Italian-language version of Don Carlos ), and Maurice Renaud (a singing actor of

9296-741: The preserve of lightweight baritone voices. They were given comic parts in the tradition of the previous century's comic bass by Gilbert and Sullivan in many of their productions. This did not prevent the French master of operetta, Jacques Offenbach , from assigning the villain's role in The Tales of Hoffmann to a big-voiced baritone for the sake of dramatic effect. Other 19th-century French composers like Meyerbeer, Hector Berlioz , Camille Saint-Saëns , Georges Bizet and Jules Massenet wrote attractive parts for baritones, too. These included Nelusko in L'Africaine (Meyerbeer's last opera), Mephistopheles in La damnation de Faust (a role also sung by basses),

9408-540: The province of tenors. More often than not, however, baritones found themselves portraying villains. The principal composers of bel canto opera are considered to be: The prolific operas of these composers, plus the works of Verdi's maturity, such as Un ballo in maschera , La forza del destino , Don Carlos / Don Carlo , the revised Simon Boccanegra , Aida , Otello and Falstaff , blazed many new and rewarding performance pathways for baritones. Figaro in Il barbiere

9520-439: The range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C (i.e. F 2 –F 4 ) in choral music, and from the second A below middle C to the A above middle C (A 2 to A 4 ) in operatic music. Within the baritone voice type category are seven generally recognized subcategories: baryton-Martin baritone (light baritone), lyric baritone, Kavalierbariton , Verdi baritone, dramatic baritone, baryton-noble baritone, and

9632-585: The recording studio in 2000 to contribute vocal tracks on Simon Rattle 's Classic Ellington album. Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights Movement . In 1941, she sang at Café Society , New York City's first integrated venue, and worked with Paul Robeson . During World War II , when entertaining the troops for the USO, she refused to perform "for segregated audiences or for groups in which German POWs were seated in front of Black servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because

9744-416: The recordings featured Horne with a remarkably secure voice for a woman of her years, and include versions of such signature songs as " Something to Live For ", " Chelsea Bridge ", and " Stormy Weather ". The album, originally titled Soul but renamed Seasons of a Life , was released on January 24, 2006. In 2007, Horne was portrayed by Leslie Uggams as the older Lena and Nikki Crawford as the younger Lena in

9856-541: The remaining 10 years of her life. Owing to her previous heart condition, it was feared that the news would prove fatal to her (she died in 1944). They used all manner of subterfuge to give the impression that Columbo was still alive, including faked letters from him and records used to simulate his radio program. Columbo is interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California . Actress Virginia Brissac

9968-518: The rise of the baritone in the 19th century, Martin was well known for his fondness for falsetto singing, and the designation 'baryton Martin' has been used (Faure, 1886) to separate his voice from the 'Verdi Baritone', which carried the chest register further into the upper range. This voice type shares the primo passaggio and secondo passaggio with the Dramatic Tenor and Heldentenor (C 4 and F 4 respectively), and hence could be trained as

10080-512: The scene to take their place. In addition to his interpretations of lieder and the works of Mozart, Prey sang in Strauss operas and tackled lighter Wagner roles such as Wolfram or Beckmesser. Fischer-Dieskau sang parts in 'fringe' operas by the likes of Ferruccio Busoni and Paul Hindemith as well as appearing in standard works by Verdi and Wagner. He earned his principal renown, however, as a lieder singer. Talented German and Austrian lieder singers of

10192-574: The scene was deleted prior to the film's release. Horne was the first African-American person elected to serve on the Screen Actors Guild board of directors. In Ziegfeld Follies (1946), she performed "Love" by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane . Horne lobbied for the role of Julie LaVerne in MGM's version of Show Boat (1951), having already played the role when a segment of Show Boat was performed in Till

10304-546: The second half of the 19th century. The major international baritone of the first half of the 19th century was the Italian Antonio Tamburini (1800–1876). He was a famous Don Giovanni in Mozart's eponymous opera as well as being a Bellini and Donizetti specialist. Commentators praised his voice for its beauty, flexibility and smooth tonal emission, which are the hallmarks of a bel canto singer. Tamburini's range, however,

10416-536: The show, which also played to acclaim at the Adelphi Theatre in London in 1984. Despite the show's considerable success (Horne still holds the record for the longest-running solo performance in Broadway history), she did not capitalize on the renewed interest in her career by undertaking many new musical projects. A proposed 1983 joint recording project between Horne and Frank Sinatra (to be produced by Quincy Jones )

10528-565: The songs "Prisoner of Love" and "You Call It Madness (But I Call It Love)" with Con Conrad, Gladys Du Bois, and Paul Gregory; "Too Beautiful For Words", recorded by the Teddy Joyce Orchestra in 1935; "When You're in Love", "My Love", and "Let's Pretend There's a Moon", recorded by Fats Waller and Tab Hunter ; and "Hello Sister". " Prisoner of Love " is a standard that has been recorded by Frank Sinatra , Jo Stafford , Art Tatum , Perry Como ,

10640-603: The stage musical Stormy Weather staged at the Pasadena Playhouse in California (January to March 2009). In 2011, Horne was also portrayed by actress Ryan Jillian in a one-woman show titled Notes from A Horne staged at the Susan Batson studio in New York City, from November 2011 to February 2012. The 83rd Academy Awards presented a tribute to Horne by actress Halle Berry at the ceremony held February 27, 2011. In 2018,

10752-554: The travel and left the band to work at the Cafe Society in New York. She replaced Dinah Shore as the featured vocalist on NBC's popular jazz series The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street . The show's resident maestros, Henry Levine and Paul Laval, recorded with Horne in June 1941 for RCA Victor . Horne left the show after only six months when she was hired by former Cafe Trocadero (Los Angeles) manager Felix Young to perform in

10864-425: The violin at a very young age, debuting professionally at the age of 13. His family moved to Los Angeles when he was 16, and he attended Belmont High School there. He left high school at age 17 to study violin under Calmon Luboviski and travel with various bands around the country. He sang and played violin in numerous nightclubs . By 1928, at the age of 20, Columbo began to participate in motion pictures, including

10976-450: The well-educated upper stratum of Black New Yorkers at the time. She lived the first five years of her life in a brownstone at 519 Macon Street. Horne's father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne Jr. (1893–1970), a one-time owner of a hotel and restaurant, was a gambler. Teddy Horne left the family when Lena was three years old and moved to an upper-middle-class African-American community in

11088-463: The years of his prime in the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s. He learned more than 100 roles in his lifetime and was mostly known for his roles in Verdi and Puccini operas, including appearances as Scarpia opposite soprano Maria Callas as Tosca at Covent Garden . Gobbi's competitors included Gino Bechi , Giuseppe Valdengo , Paolo Silveri , Giuseppe Taddei , Ettore Bastianini , Cesare Bardelli and Giangiacomo Guelfi . Another of Gobbi's contemporaries

11200-454: Was overdubbed by actress Annette Warren (Smith) for the theatrical release. Horne became disenchanted with Hollywood and increasingly focused on her nightclub career. She made only two major appearances for MGM during the 1950s: Duchess of Idaho (1950, which was also Eleanor Powell 's final film); and the musical Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956). She said she was "tired of being typecast as

11312-470: Was directed by her then son-in-law Sidney Lumet , and co-hosting the MGM retrospective That's Entertainment! III (1994), in which she related her unkind treatment by the studio. After leaving Hollywood, Horne established herself as one of the premier nightclub performers of the post-war era. She headlined at clubs and hotels throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe, including the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas,

11424-630: Was exceeded in size only by that of the lion-voiced Titta Ruffo . Ruffo was the most commanding Italian baritone of his era or, arguably, any other era. He was at his prime from the early 1900s to the early 1920s and enjoyed success in Italy, England and America (in Chicago and later at the Met). The chief verismo composers were Giacomo Puccini , Ruggero Leoncavallo, Pietro Mascagni , Alberto Franchetti , Umberto Giordano and Francesco Cilea . Verdi's works continued to remain popular, however, with audiences in Italy,

11536-659: Was five she was sent to live in Georgia . For several years she traveled with her mother. From 1927 to 1929 she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne . He was the dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now part of Fort Valley State University ) in Fort Valley, Georgia , and later served as an adviser to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt . From Fort Valley, southwest of Macon , Horne briefly moved to Atlanta with her mother; they returned to New York when Horne

11648-414: Was popularized by the likes of Columbo, Rudy Vallee , and Bing Crosby is called crooning . Columbo disliked the label, but it caught on with the general public. It gained popular credence, despite its initial use as a term of derision for the singers employing their low, soothing voices in romantic songs. Similarly, to reinforce his romantic appeal, he was called "Radio's Valentino ". Columbo composed

11760-488: Was probably closer to that of a bass-baritone than to that of a modern "Verdi baritone". His French equivalent was Henri-Bernard Dabadie, who was a mainstay of the Paris Opera between 1819 and 1836 and the creator of several major Rossinian baritone roles, including Guillaume Tell . Dabadie sang in Italy, too, where he originated the role of Belcore in L'elisir d'amore in 1832. The most important of Tamburini's Italianate successors were all Verdians. They included: Among

11872-443: Was ruled an accident and Brown was exonerated from blame. His funeral Mass was attended by numerous Hollywood actors, including Bing Crosby and Carole Lombard , who was to have had dinner with Columbo the evening of the accident and who was romantically involved with him. Columbo's mother was hospitalized in serious condition from a heart attack at the time of the accident; the news was withheld from her by his brothers and sisters for

11984-512: Was serving as Columbo's private secretary at the time of his death and was later called upon by the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office to testify and identify Columbo's remains at the subsequent inquest. In 1958, singer Jerry Vale recorded a tribute album titled I Remember Russ . In 1995, 61 years after Columbo's death, singer Tiny Tim released an album titled Prisoner of Love (A Tribute to Russ Columbo) , which he recorded with

12096-554: Was the Welshman Geraint Evans , who famously sang Falstaff at Glyndebourne and created the roles of Mr. Flint and Mountjoy in works by Benjamin Britten . Some considered his best role to have been Wozzeck. The next significant Welsh baritone was Bryn Terfel . He made his premiere at Glyndebourne in 1990 and went on to build an international career as Falstaff and, more generally, in the operas of Mozart and Wagner. Perhaps

12208-592: Was the leading American male singer of this generation. He also recorded for the gramophone. The oldest-born star baritone known for sure to have made solo gramophone discs was the Englishman Sir Charles Santley (1834–1922). Santley made his operatic debut in Italy in 1858 and became one of Covent Garden's leading singers. He was still giving critically acclaimed concerts in London in the 1890s. The composer of Faust , Charles Gounod , wrote Valentine's aria "Even bravest heart" for him at his request for

12320-579: Was to Lennie Hayton , who was music director and one of the premier musical conductors and arrangers at MGM, in December 1947 in Paris. They separated in the early 1960s but never divorced. He died in 1971. In her as-told-to autobiography Lena by Richard Schickel , Horne recounts the enormous pressures she and her husband faced as an interracial couple. She later admitted in an interview in Ebony (May 1980) that she had married Hayton to advance her career and cross

12432-528: Was twelve years old, after which Horne attended St Peter Claver School in Brooklyn. Horne then attended Girls High School , an all-girls public high school in Brooklyn, which later became Boys and Girls High School ; she dropped out at age 16. At the age of 18 she moved to her father's home in Pittsburgh, staying in the city's Hill District for almost five years and learning music from native Pittsburgers Billy Strayhorn and Billy Eckstine , among others. In

12544-677: Was ultimately abandoned, and her sole studio recording of the decade was 1988's The Men in My Life , featuring duets with Sammy Davis Jr. and Joe Williams . In 1989, she received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award . In 1995, a "live" album capturing Horne's Supper Club performance was released (subsequently winning a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album). In 1998, Horne released another studio album, entitled Being Myself . Thereafter, Horne retired from performing and largely retreated from public view, though she did return to

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