Charles Panzéra
Encyclopedia
Charles [Auguste Louis] Panzéra (Geneva
, February 16, 1896 – Paris, June 6, 1976) was a Swiss opera
tic and concert baritone
.
under the tuition of Amédée-Louis Hettich were interrupted by his volunteering into the French Army during World War I
. Twice wounded, he was nevertheless able to complete the course and make his operatic début as Albert in Massenet's Werther
at the Opéra-Comique
in 1919. He remained there for three seasons, excelling in several rôles, notably Jahel in Lalo's Le roi d' Ys, Lescaut in Massenet's Manon
and, most permanently, Pelléas
. He was to sing this part numerous times in several countries through 1930.
While still a student at the Conservatoire he had met both its then-Director, Gabriel Fauré
, who oriented him towards the interpretation of vocal chamber works
, and a fellow student, pianist Magdeleine Baillot, who would become his wife and life-long accompanist.
Fauré dedicated to Panzéra his song-cycle, L'horizon chimérique
, composed in the autumn of 1921. The young baritone's creation of the new score at a concert of the Société Nationale de Musique
, on 13 May 1922, was a resounding success and made Panzéra's name.
A marvelous lyric baritone, Panzéra's beautiful, warm and expressive instrument was perfectly at home in the subtle world of the art song
. He became a world-renowned interpreter of the mélodie
and the lied
, touring extensively for nearly forty years. Besides Fauré, he worked personally with and sung the premières of works by Vincent d' Indy, Albert Roussel
, Joseph Guy-Ropartz
, Arthur Honegger
, Darius Milhaud
and many others.
In 1949 he was appointed a professor at the Paris Conservatory, remaining till 1966. He also taught voice at the École Normale de Musique de Paris
. Among his notable pupils was the composer Gabriel Cusson
and opera singer Pierre Mollet
.
to make recordings. So many were the offers of engagements he received following that fateful 13 May 1922, that it was not until December 1923 that he and Magdeleine Panzéra-Baillot were able to set themselves up before the recording funnel of the as-yet acoustic gramophone to etch their first recording waxes. They continued registering a substantial repertory until the advent of war in 1940.
Besides a large selection of mélodies by Fauré, Duparc, Saint-Saëns
, Caplet
and many others, including German Lieder, Panzéra made a celebrated complete album of Schumann
's Dichterliebe
with Alfred Cortot
at the piano in 1935. He also recorded operatic music, not only the usual chestnuts of the French baritone, but items by Lully
and other early composers, as well as J. S. Bach
, Mozart
, Beethoven
and Wagner
. He participated in the Berlioz
La damnation de Faust complete recording (1934) and extended scenes from Pelléas et Mélisande (1927).
in Japan and France, as well as by Dante-Lys of France. Pearl (Pavilion Records) has issued several invaluable volumes in excellent sound, including the Pelléas discs, which have also appeared through VAI in the USA.
, mostly of mélodies. These, unfortunately, were not chosen for re-mastering when many items of the Mercury catalogue were re-issued by Polygram
in the 1990s. Both LPs, in their original format, have become great rarities.
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
, February 16, 1896 – Paris, June 6, 1976) was a Swiss opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
tic and concert baritone
Baritone
Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...
.
Overview
Panzéra's studies at the Paris ConservatoryConservatoire de Paris
The Conservatoire de Paris is a college of music and dance founded in 1795, now situated in the avenue Jean Jaurès in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, France...
under the tuition of Amédée-Louis Hettich were interrupted by his volunteering into the French Army during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. Twice wounded, he was nevertheless able to complete the course and make his operatic début as Albert in Massenet's Werther
Werther
Werther is an opera in four acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Édouard Blau, Paul Milliet and Georges Hartmann based on the German epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe....
at the Opéra-Comique
Opéra-Comique
The Opéra-Comique is a Parisian opera company, which was founded around 1714 by some of the popular theatres of the Parisian fairs. In 1762 the company was merged with, and for a time took the name of its chief rival the Comédie-Italienne at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and was also called the...
in 1919. He remained there for three seasons, excelling in several rôles, notably Jahel in Lalo's Le roi d' Ys, Lescaut in Massenet's Manon
Manon
Manon is an opéra comique in five acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Henri Meilhac and Philippe Gille, based on the 1731 novel L’histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut by the Abbé Prévost...
and, most permanently, Pelléas
Pelléas et Mélisande (opera)
Pelléas et Mélisande is an opera in five acts with music by Claude Debussy. The French libretto was adapted from Maurice Maeterlinck's Symbolist play Pelléas et Mélisande...
. He was to sing this part numerous times in several countries through 1930.
While still a student at the Conservatoire he had met both its then-Director, Gabriel Fauré
Gabriel Fauré
Gabriel Urbain Fauré was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th century composers...
, who oriented him towards the interpretation of vocal chamber works
Chamber music
Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...
, and a fellow student, pianist Magdeleine Baillot, who would become his wife and life-long accompanist.
Fauré dedicated to Panzéra his song-cycle, L'horizon chimérique
L'horizon chimérique
L'horizon chimérique, Op. 118, is a song cycle by Gabriel Fauré, of four mélodies for voice and piano. Composed in 1921, the cycle is based on four of the poems from the collection of the same name by Jean de La Ville de Mirmont.-Composition:...
, composed in the autumn of 1921. The young baritone's creation of the new score at a concert of the Société Nationale de Musique
Société Nationale de Musique
The Société Nationale de Musique was founded on February 25, 1871 to promote French music and to allow young composers to present their music in public...
, on 13 May 1922, was a resounding success and made Panzéra's name.
A marvelous lyric baritone, Panzéra's beautiful, warm and expressive instrument was perfectly at home in the subtle world of the art song
Art song
An art song is a vocal music composition, usually written for one voice with piano or orchestral accompaniment. By extension, the term "art song" is used to refer to the genre of such songs....
. He became a world-renowned interpreter of the mélodie
Mélodie
Mélodie refers to French art songs of the mid-19th century to the present; it is the French equivalent of the German Lied. It is distinguished from a chanson, which is a folk or popular song.-Nature of the mélodie:...
and the lied
Lied
is a German word literally meaning "song", usually used to describe romantic songs setting German poems of reasonably high literary aspirations, especially during the nineteenth century, beginning with Carl Loewe, Heinrich Marschner, and Franz Schubert and culminating with Hugo Wolf...
, touring extensively for nearly forty years. Besides Fauré, he worked personally with and sung the premières of works by Vincent d' Indy, Albert Roussel
Albert Roussel
Albert Charles Paul Marie Roussel was a French composer. He spent seven years as a midshipman, turned to music as an adult, and became one of the most prominent French composers of the interwar period...
, Joseph Guy-Ropartz
Joseph Guy Ropartz
Joseph Guy Marie Ropartz was a French composer and conductor. His compositions included five symphonies, three violin sonatas, cello sonatas, six string quartets, a piano trio and string trio , stage works, a number of choral works and other music including a Prélude, Marine et Chansons for...
, Arthur Honegger
Arthur Honegger
Arthur Honegger was a Swiss composer, who was born in France and lived a large part of his life in Paris. He was a member of Les six. His most frequently performed work is probably the orchestral work Pacific 231, which is interpreted as imitating the sound of a steam locomotive.-Biography:Born...
, Darius Milhaud
Darius Milhaud
Darius Milhaud was a French composer and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as The Group of Six—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions are influenced by jazz and make use of polytonality...
and many others.
In 1949 he was appointed a professor at the Paris Conservatory, remaining till 1966. He also taught voice at the École Normale de Musique de Paris
École Normale de Musique de Paris
The École Normale de Musique de Paris is a leading conservatoire located in Paris, France. The school was founded by Auguste Mangeot and pianist Alfred Cortot in 1919...
. Among his notable pupils was the composer Gabriel Cusson
Gabriel Cusson
Gabriel Cusson was a Canadian composer and music educator. As a composer, his music was heavily influenced by the style of early 20th century French composers...
and opera singer Pierre Mollet
Pierre Mollet
Pierre Mollet is a Canadian operatic baritone of Swiss birth. He became a naturalized Canadian citizen in 1974 and in 1979 married the Canadian pianist Suzanne Blondin....
.
Recordings
Following the triumphant première of L'horizon chimérique, Panzéra was immediately contacted by French HMVEMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
to make recordings. So many were the offers of engagements he received following that fateful 13 May 1922, that it was not until December 1923 that he and Magdeleine Panzéra-Baillot were able to set themselves up before the recording funnel of the as-yet acoustic gramophone to etch their first recording waxes. They continued registering a substantial repertory until the advent of war in 1940.
Besides a large selection of mélodies by Fauré, Duparc, Saint-Saëns
Camille Saint-Saëns
Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was a French Late-Romantic composer, organist, conductor, and pianist. He is known especially for The Carnival of the Animals, Danse macabre, Samson and Delilah, Piano Concerto No. 2, Cello Concerto No. 1, Havanaise, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, and his Symphony...
, Caplet
Caplet
Caplet can refer to one of the following:*A short, half-round fencing cape with a collar, worn over one sholder. A cord , ran from one end of the collar to the other, allowing it to be secured around the man's chest...
and many others, including German Lieder, Panzéra made a celebrated complete album of Schumann
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....
's Dichterliebe
Dichterliebe
Dichterliebe, 'The Poet's Love' , is the best-known song cycle of Robert Schumann . The texts for the 16 songs come from the Lyrisches Intermezzo of Heinrich Heine, composed 1822–1823, published as part of the poet's Das Buch der Lieder. Following the song-cycles of Franz Schubert , those of...
with Alfred Cortot
Alfred Cortot
Alfred Denis Cortot was a Franco-Swiss pianist and conductor. He is one of the most renowned 20th-century classical musicians, especially valued for his poetic insight in Romantic period piano works, particularly those of Chopin and Schumann.-Early life and education:Born in Nyon, Vaud, in the...
at the piano in 1935. He also recorded operatic music, not only the usual chestnuts of the French baritone, but items by Lully
Jean-Baptiste Lully
Jean-Baptiste de Lully was an Italian-born French composer who spent most of his life working in the court of Louis XIV of France. He is considered the chief master of the French Baroque style. Lully disavowed any Italian influence in French music of the period. He became a French subject in...
and other early composers, as well as J. S. Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
, Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
, Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
and Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
. He participated in the Berlioz
Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts . Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a...
La damnation de Faust complete recording (1934) and extended scenes from Pelléas et Mélisande (1927).
On compact disc
Many if not all of the above-noticed items have been reissued by EMIEMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
in Japan and France, as well as by Dante-Lys of France. Pearl (Pavilion Records) has issued several invaluable volumes in excellent sound, including the Pelléas discs, which have also appeared through VAI in the USA.
Mercury
After the War, M and Mme Panzéra made two LPs for MercuryMercury Records
Mercury Records is a record label operating as a standalone company in the UK and as part of the Island Def Jam Motown Music Group in the US; both are subsidiaries of Universal Music Group. There is also a Mercury Records in Australia, which is a local artist and repertoire division of Universal...
, mostly of mélodies. These, unfortunately, were not chosen for re-mastering when many items of the Mercury catalogue were re-issued by Polygram
PolyGram
PolyGram was the name of the major label recording company started by Philips from as a holding company for its music interests in 1945. In 1999 it was sold to Seagram and merged into Universal Music Group.-Hollandsche Decca Distributie , 1929-1950:...
in the 1990s. Both LPs, in their original format, have become great rarities.