Opera Chic

Amber Glossop's Tribute To Her Daddy, The Late Great Peter Glossop

(via Maldito Candelabro)

Peter Glossop, 1928-2008: The Working Class Hero Who Showed The Italians How You Sing Verdi

Every time Opera Chic hears the hard-to-kill nonsense about the "Italian sound", the "German sound", the "Whatever sound", as if conductors and singers had some sort of proprietary right over the repertory of their native lands, we think, for example, about the kid from wartime Sheffield who took la Scala by storm as Rigoletto and Di Luna, and fascinated Karajan and Giulini and, even, it is said, impossible-to-please Solti. We now mourn the passing of maestro Peter Glossop, Verdi and Puccini and Wagner baritone who made the world's greatest opera houses (Scala, Covent Garden, Met) tremble with the raw power of his bada$$ song:

It is thought that Karajan was in the audience when Glossop sang a year later in Pagliacci at La Scala. He was captivated by his performance, the musicality of his voice, and his stage presence — in an interview he said of Glossop: “Those pale blue penetrating eyes . . . panic and anger are not far below the surface.” In 1970 Karajan cast Glossop alongside two of the great stars of the era — Jon Vickers as Otello and Mirella Freni as Desdemona — in Karajan's own epic production of Otello at Salzburg.

Maybe Verdi was from Sheffield, too.