Product Description

During his extraordinary career, the now-legendary Canadian tenor Jon Vickers sang the most demanding of operatic roles -- Tristan, Peter Grimes, Otello, Aeneas, Parsifal -- with searing emotional intensity and dramatic interpretation. In this first biography of Vickers, Jeannie Williams provides a captivating and revealing portrait of a very private, deeply religious man and complex artist who baffled and often enraged his friends and colleagues.

Drawing on scores of interviews with those who knew and worked with Vickers, Williams traces his life from boyhood in western Canada, to schooling in Toronto, to his debut at Covent Garden, to his tenure at the Royal Opera House, to his celebrated appearances on the world's major opera stages. She discusses his signature roles, including details of a little-known Otello in South Africa, over-the-edge performances, and stormy battles with conductors and directors. In addition, she details Vickers' controversial withdrawal from the Tannhuser opera, his on-going friction with BBC-TV, his conflicted relationship with his native Canada, and his choices in repertory. Williams also illuminates the paradoxes in the world view of a man who might have been a preacher or a prime minister if he had not been blessed with such a remarkable musical talent.

This in-depth, well-balanced, and objective biography will stand as the definitive work on one of the world's greatest heroic tenors.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #483140 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-31
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.32 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 424 pages

From Amazon.com
Although Jeannie Williams was not able to get cooperation from Jon Vickers for her biography of the tenor, he should hardly be displeased with the result. Whenever she touches on the big battles Vickers fought in the opera world--and there are many, from an early dispute with BBC television that simmered for decades, to touchy relations with the Bayreuth Festival that restricted Vickers's appearances to just two summers, to his famous withdrawal from engagements as Tannhäuser--Williams is scrupulous in her presentation of every aspect of the dispute. What emerges from this life story is a great artist who is surprisingly simple, true to his beliefs from the very start, and dispassionately aware of the value of his gifts. Williams gives us a man who encompasses three of opera's most demanding roles (Otello, Tristan, and Aeneas in Les Troyens) in one season at the Metropolitan Opera, then is asked to stand by for Placido Domingo as he toys with Aeneas in the Met's centennial season. Lack of respect in his native Canada is a recurring theme: the great Tristan shares the bill with Phil Silvers at the Canadian National Exposition, and a fitting farewell tour is sabotaged by the Canada Council.

Because she must rely on published interviews, Williams is constricted in her analysis of how Vickers developed his highly individual interpretations of his roles. Tellingly, a singing actress who could meet Vickers on his own terms, Teresa Stratas, offers the most revealing descriptions of how the singer worked. Through accumulation of details (Benjamin Britten twice walked out on Vickers's Peter Grimes; elsewhere we learn that Vickers found embellished Handel "old fashioned"), Williams gives us a sense of what made Vickers wild and gripping onstage. Birgit Nilsson contributed the lovely foreword. --William R. Braun

From Publishers Weekly
Unquestionably one of this century's foremost vocal artists, Vickers (b. 1926) is renowned for the emotional intensity and distinctive interpretations he has brought to his performances. He is also notorious for violent rages, intolerance and arrogance, which have alienated many associates and colleagues. In this remarkably even-handed, unauthorized account, Williams, a USA Today columnist, engagingly depicts the conflicting aspects of a great artist's personality and how they shaped his career. Both music and religion were prominent in the large Canadian family into which Vickers was born. A dichotomy eventually evolved in him between the humility of a deeply religious man who believed his voice was "God-given" and the egotism of the internationally renowned operatic tenor who was intensely conscious of his greatness. For example, Vickers believed that "conductors, singers and other performers are not artists; they merely serve the true creative artists, the composers." However, in 1975, Benjamin Britten, the composer of Peter Grimes (one of Vickers's signature roles), became so enraged by the tenor's portrayal that he actually walked out of two performances in which Vickers was singing. Vickers has always been devoted to his family, insisting on privacy and sacrificing engagements when his wife became ill and later died from cancer. Between performances, Vickers returned to his farm, becoming so absorbed with outdoor work that in one concert program listing he mentioned his "second career as a cattle farmer." Williams gives his subject, as well as Vickers's colleagues, a welcome respect and objectivity--qualities that are rarely found in the insular world of opera. (Dec.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Unlike both his contemporary Maria Callas and the "three tenors" of the succeeding generation, Canadian tenor Jon Vickers (1926- ) has been the focus of few publicationsAchiefly because of his fiercely private nature. Williams (a USA Today and freelance opera columnist) attempts to rectify this situation through her painstaking traversal of the singer's career. Although attention given a hitherto neglected artist is welcome, lack of cooperation from her subject and her disappointingly pedestrian writing styleAwhich consists mainly of stringing together a series of fact-based quotesAdetract from an otherwise illuminating study. While her descriptions of what motivated Vickers's operatic portrayals are fascinating, in the end, he comes across as an egotistical figure obsessed with finances. The chronological appendixes of Vickers's performances and a brief discography/videography are useful. Recommended as a gap-filling first-available resource while we await a definitive, balanced biography.ABarry Zaslow, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.