ALREDO KRAUS

TENOR

NOVEMBER 24, 1927

Alfredo Kraus was born on this day in 1927. It is not difficult to acknowledge that he was deserving of the title Tenore di grazie by the way he sang and conducted his life.

Born to an Austrian father and a Spanish mother in the Canary Islands, Alfredo and his older brother Francesco Kraus Trujillo, a baritone, were given a solid musical education starting with piano lessons from an early age and went on to study music and opera alongside each other.

In 1948, the twenty-one year old Alfredo left for Barcelona where he studied singing for two years under a Russian teacher, Gali Markoff, who applied a rigorous and scientific method to his natural but light weight voice.^[1] He was also a pupil of Francisco Andres, who taught him a singing technique similar to that imparted by Mercedes Llopart, the great Spanish singer and teacher.^[2] Then in Milan, both he and his older brother studied with Mercedes Llopart herself. Under her guidance, he learnt the correct positioning of sound in the “mask” (the facial cavities of resonance), how to lean on the diaphragm, and in fact compress the breath between diaphragm and mask. All these are elements of the famous Lamperti-Garcia singing technique of the mid 1800s.^[3]

Like many Spanish singers, he started his career singing Zarzuela on stage in Madrid and Barcelona.

At the age of 29, in 1956 after winning the silver medal at the Geneva International Singing competition he was engaged to make his operatic debut in Cairo as the Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto.

After his successful Cairo debut, he was invited to sing Alfredo, in Verdi’s, la Traviata. Firstly, in Venice and subsequently in Turin and Barcelona during 1957, and at the Stole Theatre in London in 1958, where his partner, was the then equally unknown young soprano, Renata Scotto.

By 1958 he was singing along side Maria Callas in the legendary La Traviata performance at the Teatro Nacional de Sāo Carlos in Lisbon of which a live recording was later released. Of his experience singing opposite Maria Callas in Lisbon, he recalls, with gratitude and special satisfaction.

Overawed by Callas’ fame and reports of her difficult temperament, offstage and on, he was understandably nervous. To his surprise, she proved an outstandingly supportive and sympathetic colleague, whose stimulating presence was a contributing factor to his own success.^[4]

Subsequent debuts followed in 1959 as Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor at Covent Garden and Elvino in La Sonnambula at La Scala in 1960. His American debut took place in Chicago in 1962 as Nemorino in L’elisir d’amore, followed by his debut at the Metropolitan in New York in Rigoletto where audiences celebrated his finely honed technique, impeccable diction and mastery of the bel canto repertoire.

Kraus managed his career very carefully and ‘stuck to his guns’ so to say. He avoided ever singing outside of his lyrical tenor voice repertoire, though offers to do so were forthcoming and frequent.

He was especially known for his interpretation of Massenet’s Werther, Gounod’s Faust and roles requiring extreme high notes such as Bellini’s i Puritani which the conductor Tulio Serafin thought that the role was made for him, with its fiendishly difficult Tessitura, culminating in a series of D naturals.^[5] It goes almost without saying, he sang La fille du Régiment with its nine high C’s. He still sang this aria masterfully at the Gala Lirica in Seville in 1992 even at the age of sixty five years.^[6]His superlative technique and determination never to sing beyond his capabilities enabled him to sing and perform into his seventies.

Of his Art and his life philosophy Kraus said: …for the artist has a duty to be a teacher, an educator, beyond popular tastes and fashion. Instead of singing to the gallery, we should sing for that section of the public, be it 50, 20, 10 or even 1%, who really understand. I deeply believe in elitist standards, not from the snobbish social aspect, but from the point of view of quality and excellence. In singing for this minority of the public, capable of truly appreciating what you do, we also help raise the level of understanding of the majority, who have now heard and will know the difference between excellence and mediocrity. Maybe not today, but certainly tomorrow, or the day after. What does it matter if one’s temporary antagonised? I give my art, it is the public who should come to me, not vice versa. This is the way of the bequeathing something valid and worthwhile to the future of our art.’^[7]

From a technical point of view, he gave variety to his voice using piani, pianissimi, smorzature, rinforzati and top notes with color bursting into a head squillo, which Mr. Gualerzi, a top Italian critic, felt it was a falsetto. In a Spanish magazine, Ritmo, of March 1978, Kraus responded to Gualerzi’s criticism by saying: ‘I never attempted the falsetto technique. I never felt the need for it, and further, I do not know how to do it. Maschera and falsetto are two wholly different emission techniques. If you do one you cannot do the other. It is not easy to shift the voice from one position to the other.”^[8] He reiterated this view in his interview with Bruce Duffie in 1981.^[9]

Kraus’ discography is extensive making many full opera recordings with EMI and he was involved with a recording label. Les Pêcheurs de Perles featured in long playing operatic records, later marketed by a record company, Carillon Records, and distributed in Italy by the House of Giancarlo Bongiovanni.^[10]

Throughout his career, Alfredo Kraus received numerous distinctions and awards, including Grand Cross of the Order of Alfonso X the Wise; Order of Isabella the Catholic, Commander by Number; Knight of the French Legion of Honour; Austrian Grand Cross of Honour for Science and Art; Enrico Caruso Prize, Italy; Metropolitan Opera House Prize, New York; and the title of Kammersänger from the Opera of Vienna. He also received awards in the islands of his birth, including Canary Islands Gold Medal; distinction as Favourite Son of the City of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria; the Can de Plata and Can de Oro Awards for the Arts, from the Cabildo Insular de Gran Canaria; and the Canary Islands Fine Arts and Performance.^[11]

One of his most cherished projects was the establishing in 1990 of an international biannual singing competition and continues in his name to help young opera singers of all nationalities.

Three auditoriums, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Majadahonda (Madrid) and Aspe (Alicante), and two cultural centres, in Mirasierra-Fuencarral (El Pardo, Madrid) and Tejeda (Gran Canaria) have been named after Alfredo Kraus. A primary school in Lomo Los Frailes (Tamaraceite, Gran Canaria), the Chair of singing at Barcelona’s Liceo Conservatory, and the Aula Cultural (cultural department) of the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria are also named after him. In 2000, the Opera Season in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, organised by Amigos Canarios de la Ópera, took the name Alfredo Kraus, the same year that the Spanish postal service highlighted his career with a stamp in its Personajes Populares (Popular Figures) series.^[12]

He died in Madrid in 1999 of a prolonged illness at the age of 71 two years after the death of his wife Rosa whom he married in 1956.

From the Los Angeles Times obituary, it was written that Kraus maintained that it was emotion, not precision, that made an opera singer great. ‘For me, to live and breathe a role is far more important than singing it to perfection, because a perfect voice can be as dull as dishwater,’ he has said. ‘What the public must ^[13]understand is that singing is a matter of musicality, sensitivity, personality, and above all, maturity.”^[14]

NOTES

^[1] OPERAVIVA – TENORS – ALFREDO KRAUS (INDIVIDUAL AUTHOR NOT IDENTIFIED), JUNE 9, 2015

^[2] IBID.

^[3] IBID.

^[4] BARKER, SYDNEY R., ALFREDO KRAUS (NO DATE)

^[5] IBID.

^[6]YOUTUBE, ALFREDO KRAUS, LA FILLLE DU REGIMENT, SEVILLA, SPAIN, 1992

^[7] IBID.

^[8] IBID.

^[9] DUFFIE, BRUCE. TENOR ALFREDO KRAUS A CONVERSATION WITH BRUCE DUFFIE. TENOR ALFREDO KRAUS A CONVERSATION WITH BRUCE DUFFIE

^[10] IBID. AND CLOR

^[11] CONCURSO INTERNACIONALE DE CANTO ALFREDO KRAUS