Plus blanche http://www.box.net/shared/5mczkdyevs
Qui sotto il ciel http://www.box.net/shared/qg56a8sirz

Ah! Mathilde http://www.box.net/shared/yo5k4oqvv0

Auber, Du pauvre seul http://www.box.net/shared/iuun27xr40

Roi du ciel http://www.box.net/shared/jekadglkbx

Fantaisie http://www.box.net/shared/zf7hi1g8qz


Me sorprende mucho que otros foreros no se hayan animado a participar, sin duda Leo Slezak es uno de los más grandiosos cantantes de todos los tiempos a la altura de cualquier otro; y me parece injusto lo poco conocido que es o lo poco que se escucha a pesar de lo paupérrimo de las grabaciones nos muestra una voz magistral, sublime, deliciosa.

En mi caso, he escuchado todo lo has subido. Pero para decir simplemene "genial" prefiero permanecer en la sombra.

Y permíteme una nota crítica: soy yo el primero que habrá cometido el mismo error en alguna ocasión, pero de veras que llama poco la atención una presentación de un cantante donde todo se limita a decir que es estupendo, colosal, magnífico, genial, el mejor, etc. Dicho con todo el respeto, pero hecho de menos algo más de "miga" en tus comentarios, Rinaldo. Y más de lo mismo con Melchior. Espero no molestarte con este apunte.

Para nada, pero es que sinceramente no le encuentro defectos a este cantante, posiblemente la consternación de escuchar una voz de esta magnitud no me permite ver más allá, pero no se en tu caso que opines.

Por cierto
Copio tal como me encontré un comentario de un disco de Leo Slezak

For those of you who wonder if Caruso had a rival, the answer is Yes and his name was Leo Slezak. Born the same year as Caruso (1873), Slezak's voice was even more powerful (so powerful, in fact, that the high notes consistently "blast" the old recording process), even more poetic (he sang EVERYTHING, from Mozart to Wagner), even more well-blended (he could sing piano, pianissimo, forte, fortissimo, sometimes all the the same phrase), and much more musical. This 2-CD set covers the years 1928-29, when Slezak was 55-56 years old, yet both the power and the poetic magic of the voice are still intact. By modern standards, a few of his lieder performances don't work (too much rubato in "Die Post," for instance, slurred figures in "Wohin?" and not enough dramatic bite in "Zueignung"), but when compared to Caruso he is incomparably the greater artist. Particularly wonderful are his versions of "Nacht und Traume," "Die Nussbaum," Schubert's "Serenade" and "An die Musik," and the arias from "La Juive," "Pagliacci" and "Otello." (In fact, Slezak was THE preferred Otello in the years before Zenatello and Melchior: he sang the role under both Gustav Mahler and Arturo Toscanini.) The Wagnerian excerpts are conducted rather slackly, yet to hear Slezak "build" the music during the complete Rome Narrative from "Tannhauser" is to realize how much greater he was, not only than Caruso but of Melchior as well. Just as there was only one Caruso, there was only one Slezak; and if your imagination can fill in the gaps in Caruso's timbre, you can certainly imagine Slezak's rocket-like high notes reverberating in a theatre with the palpable force of an earthquake....on top of which, Slezak caressed words like a poet and sang straight from the heart, without the least pretense or artifice. There was no one else like him in the history of music, and his influence on the following generation of German tenors (Tauber, Wittrisch, Volker, Groh and Roswaenge) was as powerful as Caruso's on the Italians. Highly recommended!

Claro que es estupendo, pero más allá de la mera hagiografía, sería interesante tener más datos sobre su carrera, una caracterización de su vocalidad, quizá su discografía. Algo de eso hecho de menos. Pero ya digo que no quiero yo operar como juez de nadie, faltaría más. Sólo intentaba indicarte por qué quizá no haya muchos comentarios. Para decir "+1", tampoco merece la pena postear a veces.

Vaya en cuanto a datos de la carrera sigo investigando todo su repertorio que fue extremadamente amplio.


Recordings:

Leo Slezak - Recordings 1903 - 1923 (Arias of Verdi, Rossini, Meyerbeer, Halévy, Puccini, Mascagni, Leoncavallo, Gounod, Massenet, Charpentier, Mozart, Flotow, Goldmark, Wagner. Songs of Schumann, Schubert, R. Strauss). Great release, rare material!
Pearl (2 CD)

Leo Slezak Vol. 1 - Gramophone recordings 1907 - 1908 (Arias of Weber, Auber, Rossini, Halévy, Meyerbeer, Wagner, Verdi, Gounod, Goldmark and Grieg)
Preiser - LV

Leo Slezak Vol. 2 - G & T recordings 1905 - 1907 (Arias of Mozart, Meyerbeer, Halévy, Gounod, Bizet, Délibes, Wagner, Verdi, Goldmark, Puccini)
Preiser - LV

Leo Slezak (Arias and duets of Auber, Rossini, Halévy, Meyerbeer, Wagner, Verdi, Gounod, Goldmark). Songs
Preiser - LV

Unforgettable Leo Slezak (Unvergesslicher Leo Slezak). Songs of Schubert, Schumann, Loewe, Hildach and nine popular songs
Preiser - CO

Les Introuvables du Chant Verdien
EMI

The Four Minunte Cylinder - Part I
Symposium

Richard Wagner on Record
Preiser

Songs of Franz Schubert in Historical Recordings
Preiser

Carl Loewe - Recordings from 1902 - 1970
Preiser

Famous Tenors of the Past
Preiser-LV

Immortal Voices of the Vienna State Opera
Preiser

34 “Di Quella Pira” from Il Trovatore (Verdi)
Bongiovanni

¿No hay ninguna grabación completa?

Hasta donde sé no, por infortunio y por cierto tiene un Romerzählung que no lo encuentro en ninguna parte debido a que el disco que lo manejaba está descatalogado.

Leo Slezak is generally regarded as a German tenor, although he was actually born in what is now the Czech Republic. But, Moravia, where he is from, was Austrian at the time, and had a significant German speaking population, with German the dominant language of the middle and upper classes. He made his debut in Brno (then Brunn), at a time when most opera performances were sung in German, and, to the best of my knowledge, all of his recordings were in that language or Italian (the great majority being in German). He made over 400 records from a wide repertory of German, Italian and French operas, as well as many Lieder and some operetta. His two published discographies list no records from Czech operas. The arias he recorded most frequently include 11 versions each of the Preislied and "Celeste Aida", nine of the "Ah, fuyez douce image" and seven of the "Roi du ciel" from Le prophète. His stage repertory could probably be divided into four more or less equal parts. Verdi predominated, with 133 performances of Radames, 130 of Otello, 91 of Manrico, and at least 41 of Riccardo. He also sang Ernani and the Duke in Rigoletto. Wagner and grand opera (comprising Elèazar, Raoul, Jean in Le prophète and Assad), were probably tied for second and third, with other composers, including Mozart, Boieldieu, Gounod, Puccini, etc. coming in fourth. His career was largely centered on Vienna, but also included an important stint at the Met, some stays in Brno, Breslau and Berlin during his youth, and guest appearances in many other centers. He has been described as everything from a "Heldentenor" (in many sources) to a large voiced lyric tenor (by Michael Scott, in his books on great singers). I would split the difference, calling him the German equivalent of a French "fort tenor", who could sing everything from Mozart to the lighter Wagner roles, and did.

For the 30 years that opened the twentieth century, Leo Slezak was one of the outstanding dramatic tenors, and is best known today for his Wagnerian roles, but he was also capable of the shading and subtleties required for French opera, and was greatly admired in such roles as Gerald in Delibes' Lakmé and des Grieux in Massenet's Manon.

Having studied with Adolf Robinson, his operatic debut was as Lohengrin in Brno, in 1896. Two years later, he made his Berlin debut in the same role, and in 1900, performed it again at Covent Garden, when the Breslau company, which he joined the year before, toured abroad. In 1901, his rise to fame began when he came to the attention of Gustav Mahler, who invited him to join the Vienna State Opera. He made his debut was as Arnold in Guillame Tell, beginning a 32-year association with that house. In 1907, however, when Mahler left, Slezak also left to pursue an international career. In Paris, he studied the French operatic repertoire with Jean de Reszke and song with Reynaldo Hahn. Moving on to the United States, his Met debut was as Otello in 1909. Though he returned to the Vienna State Opera in 1913, he continued to make international appearances until his farewell performance as Canio in 1933.

His sense of humor was legendary. When the swan boat was pulled onstage without him during a production of Lohengrin, he turned to a stagehand and asked "What time does the next swan leave?" In another incident, reported in his memoirs without giving names or places, he described a trick he played on another singer. When a stranger showed up at a rehearsal of Gluck's Armide, and exchanged a few words with Slezak, Slezak told a curious fellow cast member that the gentleman was no less than Gluck himself, who had come to tell him that he had never heard Renaud (Slezak's role) sung so beautifully. The gullible singer fell for it, and was furious when he found out that Gluck had been dead for about 150 years. (Matters got a bit trickier when during a performance of Pagliacci, a gentleman came backstage to congratulate Slezak. The other singer asked who he was, and was told, "I'm the composer, Leoncavallo," which was greeted with loud indignation and cries of, "You can't fool me twice, Leoncavallo probably died years ago." Of course, this time the visitor was the composer.)

While he was not considered one of the great operatic actors, after his retirement he appeared in cameo roles in various films. His wife was an actor, and his son, Walter Slezak, pursued acting as a career (at first against Slezak's wishes), while his daughter, Margarete, also pursued an operatic career. His granddaughter, Erika (Walter's daughter), is a celebrated soap opera star. Walter wrote What Time's the Next Swan?, an affectionate and humorous combination of autobiography and biography of his parents' lives, and Slezak himself wrote several volumes of memoirs.

Gracias por las informaciones.

La verdad es que tuvo un repertorio espectacular, y enorme. ¿Tampoco se conserva algún acto completo de alguna ópera? Lo digo para valorarlo más allá de las arias -donde está soberbio, generalmente-.

No recuerdo si en las tomas vienesas que nos acercó Idi hace unos meses aparecía Slezak...me suena que sí.

Bueno antes de continuar me siento un poco mal por no haber llevado de una forma correcta el hilo, un cantante como Leo Slezak merecia que se llevara minuciosamente este aspecto y otros señalados amablemente por Spinoza.


Slezak y Mozart



DIE ENTFÜHRUNG AUS DEM SERAIL, Mozart, Hier soll ich dich denn sehen http://www.box.net/shared/pl3f4zxhcu

DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE, Mozart, Bildnisarie http://www.box.net/shared/l7090kgvld

Hasta lo poco que he indagado parece ser que no, sólo poseemos fragmentos maravillosos, aunque claro espero estar equivocado y que por ahí algun forero más capacitado que yo en estos temas. nos diga que se conserva un acto completo de este cantante.

Su repertorio fue extremadamente amplio, 66 roles según recuerdo interpretando desde Siegfried hasta a Pedrillo, Tamino.

Lo de Viena no me suena, posiblemente fue antes de que yo estuviera en el foro

Aquí tienes el hilo con las tomas de Viena que citaba. Te vas a hartar de descargar.

Gracias, y a la a ver si otros foreros se animan a hablar

Por más que he buscado no he logrado encontrar todo su repertorio.

Por cierto si alguien tiene esa narración de Roma les estaré eternamente agradecidos si la pueden subir.

cantó funciones, entre ellas Tannhäuser, Manrico, Canio, Lohengrin, Florestan, Stolzing, Turriddu, Erik, Radamés, Des Grieux, Tamino, Froh y Siegfried.

Aquí un viejo amigo del foro hablando de Slezak. No se lo pierdan, por favor, no se lo pierdan:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrV60dULYd8[/youtube]