John Macurdy (born in Detroit on March 18, 1929) has received international acclaim as a leading Bass (basso cantante). Since his debut at the Met in 1962, he has performed over 1,000 times and has sung over 40 roles with that company alone. Following his service in the military during the Korean War, Macurdy made his formal debut with the New Orleans Opera Association on the opening night of the 1952-53 season, as the Old Hebrew in Samson et Dalila, with Ramón Vinay and Blanche Thebom in the cast, which was conducted by Walter Herbert and staged by Wilhelm von Wymetal. He went on to appear with that company until 1959, in Thaïs, Die Entführung aus dem Serail (conducted by Julius Rudel), The Consul by Menotti, and Norma. He was to return to New Orleans for Sarastro in Die Zauberflöte, in 1979. During those years, he also occasionally performed with other companies, notably portraying Mr Earnshaw in the world premiere of Carlisle Floyd's Wuthering Heights, at the Santa Fe Opera in 1958. In 1959, Macurdy made his New York City Opera debut, as Dr Wilson in Street Scene. Among his other roles there, until 1962, were Jabez Stone in The Devil and Daniel Webster, the Basso Cantante in Six Characters in Search of an Author (world premiere, with Beverly Sills), William Jennings Bryan in The Ballad of Baby Doe, Mr Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights (opposite Phyllis Curtin and Patricia Neway), Créon in Œdipus rex (conducted by Leopold Stokowski), Colline in La bohème, Timur in Turandot, President Prexy in The Cradle Will Rock, a Priest in Il prigioniero (with Treigle), Sparafucile in Rigoletto, Don Alfonso in Così fan tutte, the King of Egypt (later Ramfis) in Aïda, Reb Bashevi in The Golem (world premiere), and the Reverend John Hale in The Crucible by Robert Ward (with Chester Ludgin). He made a return to that ensemble in 1979, for a single performance of Raimondo in Lucia di Lammermoor. It was the Metropolitan Opera that would become Macurdy's artistic home, starting with Tom in Un ballo in maschera, in 1962. From then, until 1997, he would sing more than 1000 performances in a great variety of roles, including the King (later Ramfis) in Aïda, Alessio (later Count Rodolfo) in La sonnambula (opposite Dame Joan Sutherland), Don Basilio in Il barbiere di Siviglia, the Commendatore in Don Giovanni (perhaps his most acclaimed role), Ferrando in Il trovatore, Prince Gremin in Eugene Onegin, Colline, Count des Grieux in Manon, Daland in Der fliegende Holländer, Sparafucile, Agrippa in Antony and Cleopatra (world premiere), King Heinrich in Lohengrin, Sarastro, Ezra Mannon in Mourning Becomes Electra (world premiere), Alvise in La Gioconda, Hunding in Die Walküre (with Jon Vickers), Count Walter in Luisa Miller (with Montserrat Caballé), Timur, Raimondo (to Renata Scotto's Lucia), the Grand Inquisitor in Don Carlos (with Franco Corelli), Titurel (later Gurnemanz) in Parsifal, King Marke in Tristan und Isolde, Rocco in Fidelio (with Anja Silja in her Met debut), Méphistophélès in Faust, Pimenn in Boris Godunov, Oroveso in Norma, and Tirésias in Œdipus rex (in John Dexter's production). In the year 2000, he returned to the Met, for Hagen in Götterdämmerung, under James Levine. Macurdy has performed throughout Europe, debuting in 1965 as Prince Gremin in Eugene Onegin in Marseille. He has also appeared at the Paris Opéra (Arkel in Pelléas et Mélisande, 1973), Teatro alla Scala (Rocco in Fidelio, 1974), Teatro Colón, and the Gran Teatro del Liceo in Barcelona, and has sung in all the major European centers as well as numerous productions in Lyon, Strasbourg, Bonn and Stuttgart. He appeared at festivals of Ravinia, Tanglewood, and Salzburg, and often appears at the Orange Festival in France. In 1978, he portrayed the Commendatore in Joseph Losey's famous film of Don Giovanni, with Ruggero Raimondi, Edda Moser, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Kenneth Riegel, José van Dam, and Teresa Berganza, conducted by Lorin Maazel. [See poster farther down this webpage.] Throughout his career John has received critical acclaim on the concert platform. He has sung with many major orchestras and collaborated with some of the greatest conductors of our era including Carlo Maria Giulini, Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Chailly, Rafael Kubelik, Erich Leinsdorf, James Levine, and Robert Shaw, Karl Böhm and Charles Munch. --  Names which are links (in this box and below) refer to my interviews elsewhere on this website.  BD

The chit-chat before getting down to the serious interview was about what was generally available on television . . . . .


Bruce Duffie:    As long as we’re talking about this, what do you feel is the role of the electronics, the audio and video, vis-à-vis grand opera?

John Macurdy:    Oh, I think it’s tremendously important.  I was talking with a friend in my home town the other day about recordings and tapes, and he was saying that it’s wonderful to have all these innovations; that you can carry a little tape recorder around.  You can make cassettes and can hear wonderful music, but they still haven’t found anything really to replace the record.  The statistics bear out the fact that record sales have actually moved up in the last couple of years in the classical music vein, and it doesn’t matter that there’s maybe fifty Beethoven Ninths on the market.  Every time a new one comes out, people want to hear how it was done this time.

BD:    That never ceases to amaze me.  We seem to be flooded with them, and yet the record companies would not be putting them out if they were not selling.

JM:    That’s a fact.  There are certain singers who might even be repeating the same roles!  That’s another thing, but there’ll be another orchestra, another conductor, or a different interpretation, and people want to find out if there’s any musical difference in it, or interpretational changes.  With the television, this is something that’s really wonderful because it’s opened up a whole new area for performer and viewer participation.

BD:    Sure.

JM:    I was in one of the early television opera programs they made with NBC.  In 1960 we did Don Giovanni

BD:    Was it done in English or in Italian?

JM:    That was done in English in the studios over in Brooklyn.  We had a complete run through in the morning, and then in the afternoon we went live.  The director was Kirk Browning.  You need somebody who understands camera angles.  This is the one problem we still face when we do something live, like when they do live from the Met now.  You can light a studio with a lot of light to get the effect that you need to bring up the various colors and moods.  But when we do our normal performance with lights as they are set, you have an audience that sees what is there but you don’t have to rely on the camera to relate it to you.  When using a lens we have to raise the light level considerably, and thereby you destroy some of the magic for the in-house audience.

BD:    We haven’t yet gotten to the point where you can have both the in-house audience and the in-home audience being served equally well at the same time.

JM:    Right.  Then you’ve got the audience with a stationary eye, and you have a camera that has a roving eye.  Having to readjust all the angles and trying to play it differently for the one television performance makes it a bit hectic since the cameras in the house are stationary.  I think there are three of them that they use in the shooting when they have a live show.  Since the audience still sees it, they need the expanse, the width and depth of the stage, but you can’t use it quite the same way as the television camera.

BD:    When they filmed Faust here in Chicago last season [with Freni, Kraus, Ghiaurov] they took out some seats near the middle of the main floor, and they took out a few other seats here and there so they had a bit more leverage, and a bit more opportunity for different camera angles.

JM:    They set one camera right up in the middle of the house when they do that at the Met, too.  They also have one up in the balcony and two on either side so they can pick their shots.  But it has created such wonderful response because most of the public can’t get to see the opera.  Even when you multiply the number of performances by the number of seats, all of a sudden you see there are not that many people who could get to see an opera!

BD:    One of the commentators said that more people saw the first Live From The Met Bohème in 1977 than had ever had seen it in the house.

JM:    We do approximately 230 performances a year at the Met, so with 3,820 seats that is only about a million people.  However, in one showing on the TV you can hit maybe 17 million people or more.  That is quite something.  It is spectacular, and it has created tremendous amount of interest.  At the Paris Opera, for instance, most of the premieres are televised of every new show they put on.  This is part of the service their government provides to the residents of the country.  Unitel Group just did Rosenkavalier from Munich.  I didn’t get to see it, but this is what more and more people want.  They would like to see it because they know the music, and they can hear the tunes and wonder where they came from and how they fit in.  It’s just a wonderful thing that this is made available now to the public at large. 

BD:    Do you think that maybe one of the reasons that the old NBC operas didn’t get as much response as they could have is because the people were not as experienced with opera as they are now?  So many people have been brought to the artform through recordings.

JM:    Actually, I think a good part of it was the fact is that not everybody had television sets.  It was in color.  Our Don Giovanni had Cesare Siepi, Jimmy Pease, myself, Leontyne Price, Lisa Della Casa, and Judy Raskin.  When they saw it, everybody couldn’t believe it could be so beautiful.

  [Both laugh]  That’s all we had!  In the ‘30s and ‘40s they became more generally available.  Then the first television sets were coming in the ‘50s, and NBC did its first productions around that time.  Their operas were more of a novelty in a sense to see if it could be done, and while they did some wonderful things, there weren’t that many people that could avail themselves of seeing it on television at home.

BD:    Now 97% of the households have at least one television.

JM:    We’ve got a medium that we can use and utilize, and I think it’s great.

BD:    It’s got great potential?

JM:    Yes, and also film.  Just listen to the Don Giovanni movie that Joe Losey made with Ruggero Raimondi.  [Poster shown at right]  Golly, they couldn’t believe how many people have gone, not only to see it already, but keep going back!  Like The Magic Flute a few years ago, now the Giovanni, it’s an expanding medium, and they don’t have to be concerned about rights so much for the music.  All they have to do is find a place and a situation that they might want to present it.

BD:    Let me ask about translations.  You did the NBC operas in English, and the things that are being done now on TV and film are in the originals, perhaps with subtitles.  Do you think this is the best compromise

JM:    No, Hagen comes out in a leather jerkin in our set, and there isn’t an Immolation at the end.  I was absolutely reduced to an absolute limp rag one night.  She got done and threw that torch onto the set and it started crackling.  You heard this pine bark start to crackle and the fire started to take over.  Then Hagen is looking for the ring, trying to get the Rheinmaidens away from it, and all of this is happening at once.  Then everything disappeared and you have wave upon wave upon wave come with this beautiful mountain of gold.  The gold has to come.  It makes a full circle.  In Paris we started this ill-fated Ring that only got into two of the operas.  We got with Peter Stein, who is a tremendous theater director over there.  He did the Rheingold, and he really had done his homework.  We were in late nineteenth century garb, but it worked.  So with Chéreau, this idea wasn’t absolutely brand new.  Then in Paris, God, we had another designer by the name of Gruber for the Walküre, and it was the most impossible set of different ideas with the same groups of people.

BD:    And it just didn’t work at all?

JM:    It was an impossibility and this is basically why it stopped. 

BD:    I would have thought that they would have engaged someone to design the entire Ring.

JM:    They actually they wanted done this way.  Mr. Liebermann, as in all of his career, wanted this to serve as a catalyst in creating controversy in the arts, and in a sense it isn’t all bad.  In this case it wasn’t all good.  But it made people think about different sets of values, just like Giovanni here presently here in Chicago.  Many people are way up on it, other people are way down.  However, it makes you think. It creates a talking point.  There is this thing that it makes a statement.

BD:    It makes you think about the characters and odd relationships, and gives you ideas?

JM:    Sure, so there is a validity to it.  But again, going back to the televising, I just think that all of our operas could be very handily televised and handsomely, but it would take a bit of doing.

BD:    How would you handle the dark portions, like in Siegfried, for instance?

JM:    Put the light on!  [Huge laugh]  Because that way you can see the beauty.  By your angles and shooting, I gather you can just bring out what you want, and the only unfortunate thing is you have to have light in order to have the color come up, because if you don’t, it’s all becomes black.

BD:    And of course they are improving the cameras all the time.

BD:    How can we get more people into Wagner?

JM:    We popularize it!  A few years ago I heard the Swingle Singers or somebody like that something on Beethoven.  May be some group could popularize Wagner in the same way.  It was done very tastefully at that.

BD:    I just can’t see Hagen going out there going doo-bee-doo-bee-doo-bee-doo!

JM:    No, no, no, but some group(s) could be getting it in people’s ears.  One of my sons wanted to borrow the whole Ring cycle from me to take it up to college to listen to it!  I couldn’t figure out what was going on.  I thought he must be sick because he doesn’t have more than two classical recordings to his name

BD:    Do you have an ambitions to sing Wotan?

JM:    No!  [Laughs]  It’s one thing to sing the Abschied and the Magic Fire Music since all the notes are there, but you need a voice that resounds about a tone higher than mine.  It’s a very wearing role on any voice where it’s written.  So just to do Wotan for the sake of saying you’ve sung it, no thanks.  I would much rather sing Hagen which is just as high and lower than anything Wotan has to sing, only you’re not kept up there forever.  It’s a bit like practically any bass or baritone for that matter, where you could sing the opposing roles but you don’t want to make a habit of it.  And if you did it once and you did it well, you’re going to be asked twice.  It’s like doing Fidelio.  It’s one thing to sing Pizarro, and many people say it’s much easier than Rocco.  Well, Rocco has a lot more to sing than Pizarro.  It’s a special part.  I don’t know if there is such a thing as helden bass.  We have the Helden baritone and Helden tenors, but it’s a funny thing, especially since we are playing it with a 440+ A.  That A didn’t come in until sometime in this century.  It wasn’t 440 when they wrote these operas, and quite honestly it makes a difference.  It might sound crazy because it’s only relative to what you hear, but the composers knew pretty much what they were doing.  Everybody adjusts to the pitches as they are in the roles that they do.  There are all the bass roles in Wagner that I sing, from Pogner, Marke, Hermann, Heinrich, Gurnemanz... I do them all with the exception of Rienzi, which I’ve never sung.  But the thing is I am a bass.  My voice is a bass, and I’ve looked at the record.  Emanuel List never sang Wotan.  I think he did Sachs, but there are many singers in their career who have done all the leading bass roles, but Wotan they left to Schoeffler and Hotter and George London of my generation and Theo Adam presently, and Donald McIntyre.  They have the same notes, they’re different quality.

BD:    But every once in a while you get someone like Hans Sotin moving up from the bass into Wotan.

JM:    Hans is a little higher voice.  It’s interesting.  I was just talking with Hans here, and he going to be doing his first Sachs in Germany this December.  He’s a really good colleague, and I’m delighted that he’s doing it because quite frankly, as I told him, I’d be delighted to sing Pogner to his Sachs any day in the week!  I learned Sachs and maybe I might feel more comfortable in a few more years, but presently it’s not for me.  I’d much rather sing than be bothered with it.  [Laughs]

BD:    I can understand that.  It’s a lot of work to learn a new role, and then to begin learning a new repertory.

JM:    The problem is that you do that.  If you learn this one role, if it’s the Walküre Wotan, then the next thing is you will be asked for the Rheingold Wotan, and then they’re going to be doing The Flying Dutchman, so of course forget Daland, because now you have to think of you in terms of Dutchman.  This is the unfortunate way this thing creeps along.

BD:    How much is that the fault of the agents?

JM:    I don’t think it’s any fault of the agents.  It’s just the maestri.  They want the depth of sound, and unfortunately the thing is that singers can run out of voice, but they don’t run out of arm!

BD:    In Meistersinger I feel a bit more satisfied when Hans Sachs has just a little deeper, a little more sonorous sound.

JM:    Yes, it feels a little bit better in that voice, but still, the third act is a killer.  You have the whole opening, which is an hour and thirty minutes, and then you have to end up with [sings the theme heard in the first notes of the overture].  At that point, the opera’s five hours long, and you been singing a good part of the night, and you really have to come up and hit them right between the eyes again.  It’s just a question of stamina.  One of the finest Hans Sachs I’ve ever sung with was Paul Schoeffler.  He was in his late 60s, and then a younger man, Giorgio Tozzi, was a fine Sachs at the Met.  His voice just seemed perfect for it.  Giorgio wasn’t a deep bass, but it had the color.

BD:    And yet his parts included Mephistopheles.

JM:    Most basses can sing Mephistopheles easily.  I don’t think there’s any problem there, but Giorgio never did Wotan.

BD:    Wotan and Hans Sachs need to be at their best near the end, which is almost midnight.  Does it make a great deal of difference to a singer to do a matinee performance which would end around six?

JM:    It depends upon your body chemistry.  I love matinee performances. That’s generally when my physical peak is at its highest.  Unless I am performing, around 11 o’clock I would just as soon toddle off to bed and get a good night’s sleep!  When I go to Europe it’s a great thing for me because their performances start right where my body rhythm is at its high.

BD:    That’s right, the time change would do that.

JM:    On the other hand, my colleagues coming from Europe generally are quite disadvantaged, not only for days but weeks while they’re here because they have to perform at a really ridiculous hour for them on their body clock.  But I just think that matinees are the greatest thing that were ever invented... also because you get home earlier!

BD:    Let’s talk a bit about some of your Wagner parts.  Tell me about Daland. 

JM:    I’ve sung him at the Met, the first time was with Dr. Böhm conducting, and I really had the great pleasure of appearing with George London and Leonie Rysanek, and Sandor Konya as Erik.

BD:    What kind of personality is Daland?  Is he money grubbing as a lot of people try to make him out, or is he just an opportunist?

JM:    I’d say those traits are rather closely allied!  He sees an opportunity and he grabs at it.  Quite frankly I don’t think he so much cares about his daughter’s happiness in terms of a suitor, so far as that particular suitor can provide her with a home and provide him with possibly the acquisition of another ship.

BD:    So he’s really not concerned with whether or not Senta is happy?

JM:    At that time?  I hope the ladies will forgive me, but women were chattels and daughters were conveniences.  Sons grew up to take over the father’s business or trade, and the daughters grew up to being married off well so that they could provide somehow security for the grandchildren

so it’s easier to keep a lot of these on top of your head.  Quite honestly I haven’t done Daland now in about five years because there hasn’t been a call for it.

BD:    Then a new production or a different production would force you to rethink it?

JM:    To rethink it, and then you find different values, and different ways of doing it, and different things that you want to bring out in it.

BD:    How long can you let a role go in your mind before you actually have to sit down and start over again?

JM:    Last year the Met had a problem in their Parsifal.  I was doing Oroveso, and they called me and said they needed some help to protect the performance!  I told them I could probably have it sixty per cent back in my head by tomorrow night, but by Saturday I would have it completely rememorized.  I hadn’t done the opera in four years.   [Vis-à-vis the image at right listing the 1974 broadcast, see my Interview with Boris Goldovsky, and my Interview with Edward Downes.] 

BD:    Gurnemanz is a long role!

JM:    Yes.  It’s one hour and fifteen minutes of singing that you have.  So I had it completely rememorized by Thursday.  I just pulled it out of my head!

BD:    It’s stored up there, and then you just have to call on it?

JM:    It’s stored in the residual memory.  I have fortunately some degree of photographic recall.

BD:    Was it hard in the early days to learn all these roles?

JM:    No.  Strangely, I heard so many horror stories about how long one should spend working on it to learn, because they were such enormous length that I thought there’s not enough years in one’s life to do this!  Well, much to my surprise, and only working part-time on it, I put all of Parsifal in my head in less than six weeks.  My German colleagues were absolutely dumbfounded because you can’t do this.  But you can!  [Laughs]

BD:    But it’s one thing just to memorize pitch and duration and text, and then another thing to really get inside the role. 

JM:    Sure but you unless you can do that basic work with a fair degree of speed, you’re never going to have a chance to get into it either!  The first season of this production of Parsifal by Robert O’Hearn and Nathaniel Merrill, Cesare Siepi came down with a horrendous cold and Mr. Bing asked me if I’d stay there the whole evening.  I was doing Titurel, and Gurnemanz was something I knew.  So I was ready to do it that evening, but as it turned out I didn’t have to do it.  But in the spring, a colleague canceled it and I got my opportunity that year.  I found that some of these roles are almost second nature to me, and I don’t know why.  It’s like I’ve known them, although I maybe hadn’t ever seen them before.  Something about them is just like an old friend!

BD:    Maybe it’s because you enjoy it so very much?

JM:    Well, that immensely.  I enjoy singing so much, I can’t tell you.  Maybe all of my colleagues aren’t as happy as I am.  This past weekend Miss Fox [General Manager of Lyric Opera of Chicago], through John Pritchard, asked me to do the ‘Coronation Scene’ from Boris.  [This was for the Italian Flood Relief Concert of December 7, which featured most of those artists who were singing in Chicago at that time.]  I was asked on a Friday, and I hadn’t sung Boris in two and a half years.  So I started running the tape in my mind, and by Saturday afternoon I had it all together.  Then I got the score and found everything was just as I remembered it.  It’s like a good suit of clothes.  The ones that fit, fit very, very well, and the other ones just hang in the closet!  I look at how Wagner wrote, and every one of the bass roles fits my voice like the day it was made.  It’s also true of Verdi.

BD:    When they were composing they had a certain kind of voice in mind, and you happen to be that kind of voice.

JM:    That I don’t know, but I feel very fortunate that I can fit those suits of clothes!

BD:    We’re talking about Parsifal, so what kind of a man is Gurnemanz?  How much of a different man is he in Act Three from Act One?

JM:    Of course, there’s the age difference.  That’s immediately apparent.  He’s a little more startled by a sound and he moves more slowly. 

BD:    How much time has elapsed between Acts One and Three?

JM:    Gosh, it’s got to be a good twenty years.  It’s at least that because this sojourn that Parsifal went on to recover the spear didn’t happen overnight.  He must have fathered a son, since Lohengrin much later says ‘Mein Vater, Parsifal’...  So somewhere this didn’t just happen.  It wasn’t an overnight excursion he made.  He left the temple and wandered into the wood inadvertently as he was destined to.  ‘The Pure Fool’ had to be there.  He had to shoot the swan, and he had to not know what he was saying.  In Act One he sings Durch Mitleid wissend, der reine Tor [Enlightened by compassion, the pure fool], and it is heard again at the end of Act One.  It says to Gurnemanz,

BD:    Does Gurnemanz realize it at that point?  [Note: Despite being spelled

BD:    Speaking of doing two roles in one evening, this leads us logically to Tannhaüser. Do you think that Elisabeth and Venus should be played by the same woman?

JM:    Birgit did it.  Why not?!  There is somehow this seductress in all of us, and this might be that part of her.  It might be that other side of Tannhaüser, the side that he really doesn’t want to be, but we all have our fantasies, so maybe this is his fantasy.

BD:    Then why wouldn’t Wagner have written it for the same person, or directed it to be done by the same singer?

JM:    Maybe he didn’t have a singer that could encompass both of them.  It’s an interesting thing this idea.  I’ve done Tannhaüser with Leonie as Elisabeth, and in the production we did we had Grace (Bumbry) as Venus.  [James McCracken sang the title role, and James Levine conducted.]  The vocal requirements are different however, but if you have one singer that can encompass it, it’s a certainly a great thing to be able to play this other person and then come back for this wonderful schoolgirl effect that Elisabeth is.  She really wants to make it with Tannhaüser, and he is her fantasy.  Maybe the opening act is both of their fantasies laid out before us and we haven’t even thought of it in that way.  Actually you can find all kinds of values in these operas if you want to look beyond the parameters that are generally used.

BD:    Your role in Tannhaüser is Hermann, the Landgrave.  Can you make him more than a two-dimensional character?

JM:    I give him as much life as possible.  I’m not really too happy about seeing Tannhaüser again.  I felt we were rid of him in the first act, but after he returns, Hermann says,

To read my Interview with Walter Berry, click HERE. To read my Interviews with Yvonne Minton, click HERE. To read my Interview with Ileana Cotrubas, clilck HERE.

© 1980 Bruce Duffie

This conversation was recorded in Chicago on December 11, 1980.  This transcription was made in 2015, and posted on this website at that time.  My thanks to British soprano Una Barry for her help in preparing this website presentation.

To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click here.

Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001.  His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he now continues his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.