Submitted by
Nicky Smith
Original at
The Guardian
Walter Berry
His mellifluous bass-baritone voice delighted opera audiences
The Guardian, October 30th 2000
By: Alan Blyth
For an appreciable number of years, the role of Papageno at the Vienna State
Opera was synonymous with the name of Walter Berry, who has died aged 71.
His reading of the role became indelibly imprinted on the mind of audiences,
and not only in the Austrian capital; he sang it throughout the German-speaking
world and beyond, though, sadly, never in London, where his talents were
unaccountably neglected throughout a career of more than 40 years on the
operatic stage.
When he was belatedly called to Covent Garden, as late as in 1976, it was
as Barak, the plain man personified, in Richard Strauss's Die Frau ohne
Schatten, a deeply-felt and moving portrayal in which he deployed his rich
and mellifluous bass-baritone voice to notable effect, seconding his vocal
attributes with the appropriate body language.
In 1986, he returned in a very different Straussian part, that of the impecunious,
rascally Count Waldner, in Arabella. The voice of a singer by then well
into his 50s seemed hardly affected by the passing years, and, quite recently,
he was heard on disc in the tiny, but important, part of the Major Domo
to Ren e Fleming's Countess Madeleine, in the final scene of Strauss's Cappriccio.
Berry brought signifcance to his phrases, as he had done throughout his
lengthy career.
That began while he was still a student at the Vienna Music Academy in 1947
(studying with several notable teachers), when he made his stage debut singing
Simone in Gianni Schicchi, Falstaff in Nicolai's The Merry Wives Of Windsor,
and van Bett in Lortzing's Zar und Zimmermann.
Photos of those productions show the young Berry as obviously a singing-actor
of great promise. That was fulfilled when he gained a contract at the Vienna
State Opera in 1950, remaining with that ensemble for the rest of his professional
life, while commuting in the summer to the Salzburg festival, where he sang
regularly from 1952 onwards, creating several roles in operatic premieres.
Although he first undertook small roles in Vienna - such as Silvano in Un
ballo in maschera - he was soon promoted to Masetto in Don Giovanni, and
then to Papegeno and Figaro, which became his calling-card in other houses.
He was also a noted Guglielmo, later Don Alfonso, in Cosi fan tutte, singing
the latter role in Karl Bohm's classic 1962 recording for EMI. His first
appearances on stage in London took place during the visit of the Vienna
State Opera to the Festival Hall in 1954, when he appeared as Figaro and
Masetto.
As the years went by, Berry's voice grew in strength and range, and he began
to tackle more dramatic repertory. His assumption of the title part in Berg's
Wozzeck was one of the summits of his achievement, the downtrodden soldier
to the life, but he was also admired, among many other parts, as Amonasro
(Aida), Jochanaan (Salome), the four villains in Offenbach's The Tales Of
Hoffmann, Cardinal Morone, in Pfitzner's Palestrina, and, eventually, Wotan,
in Die Walkure, one of his roles at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York,
where he made his debut in 1966 as Barak.
Another of Berry's specialities was the title role in Bartok's Duke Bluebeard's
Castle; his recording of that part, with his then-wife, mezzo Christa Ludwig,
and conducted by Istvan Kert sz, is still considered one of the best renderings
of the opera on disc. This was one of the many examples where Berry subsumed
his genial presence in the cause of enacting an unsympathetic part.
Berry and Ludwig married in 1956 and divorced in 1971. While they were a
pair, they frequently appeared together on stage and in concert. Berry's
truly Viennese Baron Ochs, to Ludwig's authoritative Marschallin, was a
partnership worth catching in the 1960s in Vienna. It is preserved on record
in the set conducted by Leonard Bernstein, who also accompanied the couple
in the piano-version of Mahler's Knaben Wunderhorn cycle.
Berry was an accomplished interpreter of lieder, and a noted soloist in
many choral works. He also enjoyed letting down his hair in operetta, especially
as Dr Falke, in Die Fledermaus. In everything, his innate musicality was
always in evidence. Nothing in his performances was exaggerated; everything
emerged from the given text. Nor did he ever extend his talents beyond their
natural limits, which probably accounts for the fact that his career lasted
so long.
He is survived by his son.
* Walter Berry, opera singer, born April 8 1929; died October 27 2000
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