The Vacant Throne of the Operatic Tenor

The Vacant Throne of the Operatic Tenor

By Brooks de Villiers

The faithful wait in hope for the coming of their next reigning tenor, whose transcendence will be immediately apparent and will usher in a new golden age.

In the performing arts, there is a myth that talent is an endlessly renewable resource. We comfort ourselves with the belief that as soon as one great master leaves the stage, the next is waiting in the wings. But history tells a different story, especially when it comes to the dramatic tenor. True greatness on the operatic stage does not exist as a continuum. It is a periodic anomaly. Like the birth of a sacred white bison on the American plains, a generational tenor is an event of rare and monumental significance.

And in my opinion, the next one has simply not arrived.

To understand this scarcity, one must look to the markers of the past. The immediate predecessors to our modern lineage were two starkly contrasting 19th-century masters who defined the polar extremes of vocal artistry. Notwithstanding the fact that both were born in 1850, their career timelines peaked at different points. First, there was Francesco Tamagno, an Italian tenor of pure, raw power. Tamagno, who was active from 1870 to 1905, possessed a thunderous, piercing instrument. His voice was so formidable that the composer Giuseppe Verdi personally chose him to premiere the brutal title role of Otello at La Scala in 1887. Tamagno recorded commercially for the Gramophone Company in the early 1900s. His fragile, surviving discs still capture a fierce, metallic ring.

Contrasting his force was Jean de Reszke, a Polish-born icon whose aristocratic refinement dominated London and New York in the 1880s and 1890s after Tamagno’s heyday had subsided. De Reszke possessed an elegant, highly educated lyric tone. He was so legendary that he reigned over the Metropolitan Opera as its undisputed king. Owing to the fact that he retired just months before commercial audio technology emerged, his voice is a phantom. It exists only in myth and a few minutes of song on grainy, wax cylinders secretly recorded from afar by the librarian of the Metropolitan Opera during live performances.

It is worth noting that Tamagno actually heard a young Enrico Caruso sing early in the new century. Recognizing a seismic shift in vocal history, Tamagno made a famous prediction: he declared that this young newcomer would surpass everyone to become the definitive tenor of the new age. He was right. Caruso took the crown as the next vocal titan.

The architect of modern operatic recording, singing between 1894 and 1920, Caruso’s voice possessed a dark foundation of Neapolitan velvet that bloomed into a brilliant, unforced upper register. It was a force of nature that permanently redefined what an audience expected from a leading man.

Decades later came Luciano Pavarotti, active on the opera stage from 1961 to 2004, whose instrument expressed itself in stark contrast due to its northern Italian clarity. His vocal production was so clean, and his high notes so effortless, that he made the most complex phrasing sound like a natural human breath.

Both men possessed something far beyond mere technical vocal agility: they possessed a rare cultural magnetism that could command global stadium crowds while preserving absolute artistic integrity. They were singular forces who anchored the entire international opera world through the sheer gravitas of their presence.

Today, the premier opera houses of Milan, Vienna, Paris, Berlin, London, and New York boast many highly accomplished, technically proficient vocalists. These singers can navigate complex scores with flawless accuracy. Yet the transcendent, era-defining tenor remains conspicuous by his absence. The modern industry often confuses aggressive marketing with genuine artistic longevity. True vocal majesty cannot be manufactured by an institutional public relations machine.

The lineage of generational tenors across four distinct eras, transitioning from the opposing 19th-century styles of Tamagno and de Reszke, moving into the foundational recorded era of Caruso, and concluding with the massive global superstardom of Pavarotti leaves us with the current vacancy in modern opera.

Until nature decides to grant us another vocal phenomenon, the global operatic stage remains in a state of patient anticipation. We are left to wander through the vast archive of past recordings, listening wistfully to the echoes of Caruso and Pavarotti. We wait for that unmistakable, breathtaking sound to return to us once more. Until that day, the seats remain full, but the throne stands empty.

Brooks de Villiers is an international journalist who divides his time between New York and Paris, specializing in the international performing arts. From the 1970s through the 1990s, his work appeared in various print publications, profiling artists in theater and opera. After stepping away from the press for two decades to manage his family’s estate in France, he returns to writing about culture and the artists who drive it.