German card.
German postcard or collector's card by Ross Verlag. Photo: Fritz-Stein-Film Verleih GmbH.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A1161/1, 1937-1938. Photo: Pallas-Siegel Monopol-Film.
A tall, barrel-chested man with a large and attractive lyric-dramatic voice
Leo Slezak was born in Šumperk (German: Mährisch-Schönberg), northern Moravia (then part of Austria-Hungary), as the son of a miller. Slezak worked briefly as a blacksmith and an engineer's fitter, and he served in the army before taking singing lessons with the first-class baritone and pedagogue, Adolf Robinson.
He made his debut as Lohengrin in the Opera by Richard Wagner in 1896 in Brno (Brünn) and proceeded to sing leading roles in Bohemia and Germany, appearing in 1898–1899 in Berlin. He then moved to Breslau, where he met his future wife, the actress Elsa Wertheim. From 1901 onwards, he was a permanent member of the ensemble of the Vienna State Opera. His successful career began.
A tall, barrel-chested man, Slezak possessed a large and attractive lyric-dramatic voice which enabled him to undertake all but the very heaviest Wagnerian parts such as Tristan or Siegfried. Slezak's international career commenced in London at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where he sang Siegfried and Lohengrin in 1900. In 1907, he studied in Paris with the great tenor Jean de Reszke. Slezak wanted to learn to sing his roles in the original language, especially in Italian (Gaetano Donizetti, Giuseppe Verdi, Giacomo Puccini, Ruggiero Leoncavallo, etc.) and French (Léo Delibes, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Georges Bizet, Fromental Halévy, François-Adrien Boieldieu, etc.).
He purposefully laid the foundations for an international career. Slezak had a distinctive tonal quality, which became markedly darker after his studies with de Reszke. In 1909, Slezak secured a three-year contract with the New York Metropolitan Opera. Met audiences acclaimed him in performances of works by Richard Wagner and Giuseppe Verdi. Along with Italy's Giovanni Zenatello, he became one of the most famous Otellos of his generation, famously performing the role at the Met with Arturo Toscanini conducting.
Leo Slezak had a versatile repertory which embraced 66 roles. When the First World War broke out during a guest performance in Russia, he had to flee and was welcomed back with open arms by the Viennese. He was not only successful on the opera stage but also as a lieder singer. In April 1934, he took to the stage of the Vienna State Opera for the last time as Otello.
German postcard by Verlag A. Baumann Naeff, München, no. 120. Photo: A. Baumann Naeff. Caption: Chamber singer Leo Slezak.
Austrian postcard. Photo: Carl Pietzner, Vienna.
A doomed audition for Frau Wagner at Bayreuth
Leo Slezak made hundreds of disc and cylinder recordings from the early 1900s into the 1930s. They were produced by several different record companies and include arias, duets and songs by a wide selection of composers, ranging from Mozart to Wagner. Most of his best records have been released on CD compilations.
Some of his film work as an actor survives as well. Slezak appeared and sang in two early sound shorts, Wilhelm Tell: Die Sonne strahlt / Wilhelm Tell: The Sun Shines (1907) and Troubadour: Miserere (1909). The first shows in three minutes the finale of Gioaccino Rossini’s opera 'William Tell' (1829), staged for the Deutsche Bioscop camera as a very static tableau, with a painted backdrop of rocks, ocean waves, and a ship’s bowsprit.
In 1932, Slezak began his second career as a star in German and Austrian films. He mostly played comic roles and almost always sang as well. His films included La Paloma / The Dove (Karl Heinz Martin, Robert Neppach, 1934), Rendezvous in Wien / Rendezvous in Vienna (Victor Janson, 1936), and Konfetti / Confetti (Hubert Marischka, 1936). A big hit was the Operetta film Gasparone (Georg Jacoby, 1937), starring Marika Rökk and Johannes Heesters. Another box-office hit was Es war eine rauschende Ballnacht / The Life and Loves of Tschaikovsky (Carl Froelich, 1939) with Zarah Leander and Marika Rökk.
Slezak's final film role was as the portly Sultan Abd ul Hamid in the Ufa prestige production Münchhausen (Josef von Báky, 1943), starring Hans Albers. In 1944, Slezak was on the 'Gottbegnadeten-Liste', the list of those pardoned by the Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda. Slezak's autobiography, published in 1938 in English as 'Song of Motley: Being the Reminiscences of a Hungry Tenor', contains pen-portraits of many of the musicians and artists with whom he worked, including Gustav Mahler, Arturo Toscanini and Cosima Wagner. It describes his tours of America, Russia and the Balkans and recalls his doomed audition for Frau Wagner at Bayreuth, when he foolishly chose to sing music from 'Pagliacc'i.
Later in life, he published several very humorous, semi-autobiographical books, notably 'Meine sämtlichen Werke' (All of my Works), 'Der Wortbruch' (The Broken Promise), and 'Der Rückfall' (The Relapse). Leo Slezak spent the last years of his life in Rottach-Egern, where he died of a heart attack in 1946. He is buried in the cemetery of St Laurentius Church (Egern) next to his wife, Elisabeth. His son, Walter Slezak, was a successful character actor in Hollywood during the 1940s and appeared in anti-Nazi films. His granddaughter and Walter's daughter is the actress Erika Slezak, noted for her role on the soap opera One Life to Live (1971-2013).
Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 694. Photo: Residenz-Atelier.
German collector card in the series 'Vom Werden deutscher Filmkunst - Der Tonfilm', album no. 11, picture no. 30. Photo: Ufa / Ross Verlag. Ida Wüst and Leo Slezak in Freut Euch des Lebens / Enjoy Yourselves (Hans Steinhoff, 1934).
German collector card by Ross Verlag. Photo: Froelich-Film / Ufa.
Sources: Annti Alanen (Annti Alanen: Film Diary), Wikipedia (English and German) and IMDb.
No comments:
Post a Comment