Jean de Reszke’s death 100 years ago this month made front-page news in England at the time, such was his fame, or should one say the fame of the de Reszke brothers. For his brother Édouard became equally famous as a bass.

Born into a well-off musical family and initially taught to sing by his mother, Jean de Reszke had planned to join the legal profession but his musical leanings won through.  He went on to study singing in Warsaw and then in Italy under Antonio Cotogni as a baritone.  He came to London in 1874 as a baritone in Mapleson’s company appearing at Drury Lane, making his debut in Donizetti’s La Favorita on 11 April 1874 as Alfonso XI.  “At that time he Italianized his name, singing as de Reschi.  Some of the London  critics, though much impressed by his style, were quick to see he was not a true baritone; and either then or a little later Santley told de Reszke that he would do no good as a baritone, and that he was a true tenor.”  Interestingly one reviewer of his debut also noted that he possessed a light baritone voice, almost a tenor in the quality of its upper notes.

From London he went to Paris to study under Giovanni Sbriglia with whom he devoted himself to the cultivation of the upper range of his voice and abandoned the stage for a time before resuming his career as a tenor.  Massenet, having heard him sing, asked him to play the title role in his new opera Le Cid.  His brother sang the role of Don Diègue.

“The turning point of de Reszke’s life came in 1887, when Augustus Harris at Drury Lane made his first venture as an operatic manager.  A trivial circumstance altered, as things turned out, the course of operatic history in London for a generation.  Lago was manager at Covent Garden – then at a very low ebb – and de Reszke offered his services at quite a modest fee.  Lago, however, had not the faintest notion of the prize that was within his grasp.  He had Gayarre, the Spanish tenor, as his star, and was content to rely on him.  De Reszke was then engaged by Harris for Drury Lane.  The Drury Lane season opened with Aïda, de Reszke singing Radames.  One night in London did more for him than his four years in Paris, and made his fortune.  London woke to the fact that a true successor to Mario had at last appeared.  De Reszke followed up his Radames by singing, among other parts, Faust and Lohengrin, and was talked about everywhere.  With de Reszke as his mainstay, Harris became manager of Covent Garden in 1888; and thenceforward all was plain sailing for him.”

State Visit to the Opera by the Shah of Persia

Royal Italian Opera, Covent Garden. Season 1891
Under the Management of Mr. Augustus Harris

“De Reszke was 37 when fame came to him so suddenly; and he remained without a rival till, in the season of 1900, failing voice told him that his day was over.  During his golden years he spent his summers in England and his winters in America, being even more idolized in New York than in London.  After the first few seasons it was more particularly in the later Wagner operas that de Reszke endeared himself to the Covent Garden audience.  They heard things the like of which they had not heard before when Siegfried, Walther, and Tristan were sung with that loveliness of tone, finished phrasing, and musical understanding which in combination together won for Jean de Reszke his unique position.  As an actor, though without the intenser gifts of a Maurel, he had in a pre-eminent degree distinction and an appropriate easy dignity; so that his Lohengrin did really seem to have come from otherwhere to meet the troubles of an inferior world, and his knightly Walther could be readily distinguished by other traits besides a tenor voice, from the burghers of Nuremberg.  But it was keen musical intelligence that was at the root of his success, leading him always to the right employment of what was his most distinctive gift – the enormous range and variety of vocal colour that he could throw across the musical phrase (like shadows passing over downs).  This subtlety he could use not only for the changing tones of lyrical passages – in a way that has made things in the second act of Siegfried or the scene with the Rhine-Maidens in Götterdämmerung a memory of delight to those who heard him – but on a far wider scale.  To take but one instance, after the rich beauty of the love duet in Tristan one remembers especially his wonderful singing of the appeal to Isolda when the lovers have been discovered by King Mark – how, while keeping a beautiful tone, he clothed his voice, as it were, with darkness and sorrow.

“Great opera singers, whatever their fault and vanities, give the public full value for the money paid to hear them.  Never was there an artist more conscientious, more determined on all occasions to do his very best, than de Reszke.  His thoroughness in every detail of his work brought its own reward.  So long as his voice retained its full power and beauty, none of his listeners went away from a performance disappointed.  He was always equal to his reputation, and it was not till his last season at Covent Garden that his voice began to fail.  Nearly all recollections of him are pleasant.  He did not linger on the scene and make young opera-goers wonder whether he had ever been great.

“Jean de Reszke was not a man whose interest in music could cease with his own public career.  The later years of his life were passed, in Paris and Nice, as an enthusiastic and inspiring teacher.  His wife survives him.  Their only son was killed in 1917, fighting in the French Army.”

All quoted text is from the obituary in The Times, 4 April 1925