Alexander Kipnis
Encyclopedia
Alexander Kipnis (May 14, 1978), was a Ukrainian
-born opera
tic bass of great artistry and vocal endowment.
Having initially established his artistic reputation in Europe, Kipnis became an American
citizen in 1931, following his marriage to an American. He appeared often at the Chicago Opera before making his belated début at the Metropolitan Opera
in New York City
in 1940.
, the capital of the government of Volhynia
, in the Russian Empire
, [now Ukraine
]. His impoverished family of seven lived in a Jewish ghetto. After his father died, when he was aged 12, he helped support the family as a carpenter's apprentice and by singing soprano in local synagogues and in Bessarabia
(now Moldova
) until his voice changed. As a teenager he took part in a Yiddish theatrical group, until he left for employment at a synagogue in Siedlce
, Poland. About this time he entered the Warsaw
Conservatory at age 19. The conservatory did not require a high-school diploma. His education included the study of the trombone
, double bass
and conducting. All the while he continued to sing in synagogues. On the recommendation of the choirmaster, he traveled to Berlin and studied voice with Ernst Grenzebach who was also a teacher of Lauritz Melchior
, Meta Seinemeyer
, and Max Lorenz. At the same time he sang second bass in Monti's Operetta Theater.
When the First World War started, Kipnis was interned as an alien in a German holding camp. While singing to himself he was overheard by an army captain whose brother was general manager of the Wiesbaden Opera
. Kipnis was released from custody and he was engaged by the Hamburg
Opera. He made his operatic debut in 1915, singing three Johann Strauss
songs as a "guest" in the party scene of the operetta Die Fledermaus
. In 1917, he moved to the Wiesbaden Opera, having gained invaluable stage experience. He sang in more than 300 performances at Wiesbaden until 1922, when he joined the Staatsoper in Berlin
.
company. For nine seasons, between 1923 and 1932, he was on the roster of the Civic Opera in Chicago
. In 1927, at the Bayreuth Festival
, he appeared as Gurnemanz in Wagner's Parsifal
under Karl Muck
and recorded the Good Friday Music under Siegfried Wagner
. (A purported live performance recording in 1933 under Richard Strauss
has been generally discounted.) He also appeared at the Salzburg Festival
.
Kipnis was under contract with the Berlin Opera until 1935, when he was able to break his contract and flee Nazi Germany. He appeared for three seasons as a guest performer with the Vienna State Opera
in 1936-1938. Just after the Anschluss
he left Europe and settled permanently in the United States.
By the time he was finally signed by the Metropolitan in 1940 he had appeared in most of the world's major opera houses. In addition to those European and American theatres already mentioned in this article, he was heard at the United Kingdom's foremost venue for singers, the Royal Opera House
, Covent Garden
, (in 1927 and 1929–1935), and also at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires
(1926–1936).
Kipnis was regarded throughout the inter-war years as being one of the greatest basses in the world. He was praised for the beauty of his smooth and mellow voice and the excellence of his musicianship. As befitted his status, he was invited to appear with the top conductors of his day. They included Ernest Ansermet
, John Barbirolli
, Thomas Beecham
, Leo Blech
, Fritz Busch
, Albert Coates
, Karl Elmendorff
, Wilhelm Furtwängler
, Robert Heger
, Herbert von Karajan
, Josef Krips
, Erich Kleiber
, Otto Klemperer
, Hans Knappertsbusch
, Serge Koussevitzky
, Erich Leinsdorf
, Willem Mengelberg
, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Pierre Monteux
, Karl Muck
, Arthur Nikisch
, Eugene Ormandy
, Hans Pfitzner
, Fritz Reiner
, Artur Rodziński
, Hans Rosbaud
, Hermann Scherchen
, Richard Strauss
, George Szell
, Arturo Toscanini
, Bruno Walter
and Felix Weingartner
.
Kipnis showed signs of vocal deterioration during the 1940s and he retired from the Met in 1946. He made his last concert appearance in 1951. Since his debut in 1915, he had sung at least 108 roles, often in more than one language, and his performances in opera and oratorio numbered more than 1600.
He died in Westport, Connecticut
in May 1978, aged 87.
and Wagner
, as well as the title role in Mussorgsky
's Boris Godunov
and the part of Rocco in Fidelio
by Beethoven. In Germany he also was renowned as a Verdi singer. He was a distinguished interpreter of German lieder and Russian songs, too.
During the 1920s and '30s, Kipnis's chief bass rivals were the vibrant Italians Nazzareno De Angelis
, Ezio Pinza
and Tancredi Pasero
in the Verdi repertoire, and the black-voiced Norwegian Ivar Andresen in the Wagner repertoire. None of these four competitors could match the breadth of Kipnis' musicianship, however, although their voices were also of exceptional quality.
His recordings of lieder by Brahms, Wolf and Schubert are highly prized today, as are his many impressive operatic recordings, especially those dating from the 1920s and '30s.
(1930–2002) was a celebrated harpsichordist.
Following in similar creative footsteps, Kipnis's grandson, Jeremy R. Kipnis (born 1965), has become known as a photographer, record producer, film director, and recently creator of 'The Kipnis Studio Standard - The 21st Century Ultimate Screening Room Design', an evolution of George Lucas's and Tom Holman's THX Motion Picture & Sound Standards. http://www.kipnis-studios.com/The_Kipnis_Studio_Standard/Home_Theater_-_2_08.html
The Best of Alexander Kipnis - arias and songs by Wagner, Mozart, Verdi, Gounod, Brahms, Meyerbeer, Wolf and Halevy in recordings selected by his son, Igor Kipnis, and issued by Pearl (Pavilion Records Ltd.), GEMM CD 9451.
"Alexander Kipnis, Mussorgsky, Boris Godunov" contains excerpts from Boris recorded in 1945 by RCA and a selection of Russian arias and songs. album 60522-2-RG
Meanwhile, the Austrian firm, Preiser Records, has also issued several well-filled CD recitals devoted to Kipnis.
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
-born opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
tic bass of great artistry and vocal endowment.
Having initially established his artistic reputation in Europe, Kipnis became an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
citizen in 1931, following his marriage to an American. He appeared often at the Chicago Opera before making his belated début at the Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
in 1940.
Early life
Kipnis was born in ZhytomyrZhytomyr
Zhytomyr is a city in the North of the western half of Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Zhytomyr Oblast , as well as the administrative center of the surrounding Zhytomyr Raion...
, the capital of the government of Volhynia
Volhynia
Volhynia, Volynia, or Volyn is a historic region in western Ukraine located between the rivers Prypiat and Southern Bug River, to the north of Galicia and Podolia; the region is named for the former city of Volyn or Velyn, said to have been located on the Southern Bug River, whose name may come...
, in the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
, [now Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
]. His impoverished family of seven lived in a Jewish ghetto. After his father died, when he was aged 12, he helped support the family as a carpenter's apprentice and by singing soprano in local synagogues and in Bessarabia
Bessarabia
Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....
(now Moldova
Moldova
Moldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...
) until his voice changed. As a teenager he took part in a Yiddish theatrical group, until he left for employment at a synagogue in Siedlce
Siedlce
Siedlce ) is a city in eastern Poland with 77,392 inhabitants . Situated in the Masovian Voivodeship , previously the city was the capital of a separate Siedlce Voivodeship ....
, Poland. About this time he entered the Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
Conservatory at age 19. The conservatory did not require a high-school diploma. His education included the study of the trombone
Trombone
The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...
, double bass
Double bass
The double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...
and conducting. All the while he continued to sing in synagogues. On the recommendation of the choirmaster, he traveled to Berlin and studied voice with Ernst Grenzebach who was also a teacher of Lauritz Melchior
Lauritz Melchior
Lauritz Melchior was a Danish and later American opera singer. He was the pre-eminent Wagnerian tenor of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, and has since come to be considered the quintessence of his voice type.-Biography:...
, Meta Seinemeyer
Meta Seinemeyer
Meta Seinemeyer was a German opera star with an exceptionally fine spinto soprano voice....
, and Max Lorenz. At the same time he sang second bass in Monti's Operetta Theater.
When the First World War started, Kipnis was interned as an alien in a German holding camp. While singing to himself he was overheard by an army captain whose brother was general manager of the Wiesbaden Opera
Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden
The Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden is the State Theatre of the German state Hesse in the capital Wiesbaden, producing operas, plays, ballets, musicals and concerts on four stages. It is also known as Staatstheater Wiesbaden or Theater Wiesbaden...
. Kipnis was released from custody and he was engaged by the Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
Opera. He made his operatic debut in 1915, singing three Johann Strauss
Johann Strauss II
Johann Strauss II , also known as Johann Baptist Strauss or Johann Strauss, Jr., the Younger, or the Son , was an Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas. He composed over 500 waltzes, polkas, quadrilles, and other types of dance music, as well as several operettas...
songs as a "guest" in the party scene of the operetta Die Fledermaus
Die Fledermaus
Die Fledermaus is an operetta composed by Johann Strauss II to a German libretto by Karl Haffner and Richard Genée.- Literary sources :...
. In 1917, he moved to the Wiesbaden Opera, having gained invaluable stage experience. He sang in more than 300 performances at Wiesbaden until 1922, when he joined the Staatsoper in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
.
International career
The following year Kipnis visited the United States with a touring WagnerianRichard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
company. For nine seasons, between 1923 and 1932, he was on the roster of the Civic Opera in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
. In 1927, at the Bayreuth Festival
Bayreuth Festival
The Bayreuth Festival is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of operas by the 19th century German composer Richard Wagner are presented...
, he appeared as Gurnemanz in Wagner's Parsifal
Parsifal
Parsifal is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. It is loosely based on Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, the 13th century epic poem of the Arthurian knight Parzival and his quest for the Holy Grail, and on Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail.Wagner first conceived the work...
under Karl Muck
Karl Muck
Karl Muck was a German-born conductor of classical music. He based his activities principally in Europe and mostly in opera. His American career comprised two stints at the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He endured a public outcry in 1917 that questioned whether his loyalties lay with Germany or the...
and recorded the Good Friday Music under Siegfried Wagner
Siegfried Wagner
Siegfried Wagner was a German composer and conductor, the son of Richard Wagner. He was an opera composer and the artistic director of the Bayreuth Festival from 1908 to 1930.-Life:...
. (A purported live performance recording in 1933 under Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
has been generally discounted.) He also appeared at the Salzburg Festival
Salzburg Festival
The Salzburg Festival is a prominent festival of music and drama established in 1920. It is held each summer within the Austrian town of Salzburg, the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart...
.
Kipnis was under contract with the Berlin Opera until 1935, when he was able to break his contract and flee Nazi Germany. He appeared for three seasons as a guest performer with the Vienna State Opera
Vienna State Opera
The Vienna State Opera is an opera house – and opera company – with a history dating back to the mid-19th century. It is located in the centre of Vienna, Austria. It was originally called the Vienna Court Opera . In 1920, with the replacement of the Habsburg Monarchy by the First Austrian...
in 1936-1938. Just after the Anschluss
Anschluss
The Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....
he left Europe and settled permanently in the United States.
By the time he was finally signed by the Metropolitan in 1940 he had appeared in most of the world's major opera houses. In addition to those European and American theatres already mentioned in this article, he was heard at the United Kingdom's foremost venue for singers, the Royal Opera House
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...
, Covent Garden
Covent Garden
Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...
, (in 1927 and 1929–1935), and also at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
(1926–1936).
Kipnis was regarded throughout the inter-war years as being one of the greatest basses in the world. He was praised for the beauty of his smooth and mellow voice and the excellence of his musicianship. As befitted his status, he was invited to appear with the top conductors of his day. They included Ernest Ansermet
Ernest Ansermet
Ernest Alexandre Ansermet was a Swiss conductor.- Biography :Ansermet was born in Vevey, Switzerland. Although he was a contemporary of Wilhelm Furtwängler and Otto Klemperer, Ansermet represents in most ways a very different tradition and approach from those two musicians. Originally he was a...
, John Barbirolli
John Barbirolli
Sir John Barbirolli, CH was an English conductor and cellist. Born in London, of Italian and French parentage, he grew up in a family of professional musicians. His father and grandfather were violinists...
, Thomas Beecham
Thomas Beecham
Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet CH was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic orchestras. He was also closely associated with the Liverpool Philharmonic and Hallé orchestras...
, Leo Blech
Leo Blech
Leo Blech was a German opera composer and conductor who is perhaps most famous for his work at the Königliches Schauspielhaus Leo Blech (21 April 1871 – 25 August 1958) was a German opera composer and conductor who is perhaps most famous for his work at the Königliches Schauspielhaus Leo...
, Fritz Busch
Fritz Busch
Fritz Busch was a German conductor.Busch was born in Siegen, Province of Westphalia. He held posts conducting opera at Aachen, Stuttgart and Dresden. In 1933 he was dismissed from his post at Dresden because of his opposition to the new Nazi government of Germany...
, Albert Coates
Albert Coates (musician)
Albert Coates was an English conductor and composer. Born in Saint Petersburg where his English father was a successful businessman, he studied in Russia, England and Germany, before beginning his career as a conductor in a series of German opera houses...
, Karl Elmendorff
Karl Elmendorff
Karl Eduard Maria Elmendorff was a German opera conductor. Born in Düsseldorf, Elmendorff studied music at the Cologne College of Music and Hochschule für Musik Köln from 1913 to 1916 under Fritz Steinbach and Hermann Abendroth...
, Wilhelm Furtwängler
Wilhelm Furtwängler
Wilhelm Furtwängler was a German conductor and composer. He is widely considered to have been one of the greatest symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century. By the 1930s he had built a reputation as one of the leading conductors in Europe, and he was the leading conductor who remained...
, Robert Heger
Robert Heger
Robert Heger was a German conductor and composer from Strasbourg, Alsace-Lorraine.He studied at the Conservatory of Strasbourg, under Franz Stockhausen, then in Zurich under Lothar Kempter, and finally in Munich under Max von Schillings. After early conducting engagements in Strasbourg he made his...
, Herbert von Karajan
Herbert von Karajan
Herbert von Karajan was an Austrian orchestra and opera conductor. To the wider world he was perhaps most famously associated with the Berlin Philharmonic, of which he was principal conductor for 35 years...
, Josef Krips
Josef Krips
Josef Alois Krips was an Austrian conductor and violinist.-Biography:Krips was born in Vienna and went on to become a pupil of Eusebius Mandyczewski and Felix Weingartner. From 1921 to 1924, he served as Weingartner's assistant at the Vienna Volksoper and as répétiteur and chorus master...
, Erich Kleiber
Erich Kleiber
Erich Kleiber was an Austrian conductor.- Biography :Born in Vienna, Kleiber studied in Prague...
, Otto Klemperer
Otto Klemperer
Otto Klemperer was a German conductor and composer. He is widely regarded as one of the leading conductors of the 20th century.-Biography:Otto Klemperer was born in Breslau, Silesia Province, then in Germany...
, Hans Knappertsbusch
Hans Knappertsbusch
Hans Knappertsbusch was a German conductor, best known for his performances of the music of Richard Wagner, Anton Bruckner and Richard Strauss....
, Serge Koussevitzky
Serge Koussevitzky
Serge Koussevitzky , was a Russian-born Jewish conductor, composer and double-bassist, known for his long tenure as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1924 to 1949.-Early career:...
, Erich Leinsdorf
Erich Leinsdorf
Erich Leinsdorf was a naturalized American Austrian conductor. He performed and recorded with leading orchestras and opera companies throughout the United States and Europe, earning a reputation for exacting standards as well as an acerbic personality...
, Willem Mengelberg
Willem Mengelberg
Joseph Willem Mengelberg was a Dutch conductor, famous for his performances of Mahler and Strauss with the Concertgebouw Orchestra.- Biography :...
, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Pierre Monteux
Pierre Monteux
Pierre Monteux was an orchestra conductor. Born in Paris, France, Monteux later became an American citizen.-Life and career:Monteux was born in Paris in 1875. His family was descended from Sephardi Jews who came to France in the wake of the Spanish Inquisition. He studied violin from an early age,...
, Karl Muck
Karl Muck
Karl Muck was a German-born conductor of classical music. He based his activities principally in Europe and mostly in opera. His American career comprised two stints at the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He endured a public outcry in 1917 that questioned whether his loyalties lay with Germany or the...
, Arthur Nikisch
Arthur Nikisch
Arthur Nikisch ; 12 October 185523 January 1922) was a Hungarian conductor who performed internationally, holding posts in Boston, London and - most importantly - Berlin. He was considered an outstanding interpreter of the music of Bruckner, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven and Liszt...
, Eugene Ormandy
Eugene Ormandy
Eugene Ormandy was a Hungarian-born conductor and violinist.-Early life:Born Jenő Blau in Budapest, Hungary, Ormandy began studying violin at the Royal National Hungarian Academy of Music at the age of five...
, Hans Pfitzner
Hans Pfitzner
Hans Erich Pfitzner was a German composer and self-described anti-modernist. His best known work is the post-Romantic opera Palestrina, loosely based on the life of the great sixteenth-century composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina.-Biography:Pfitzner was born in Moscow, Russia, where his...
, Fritz Reiner
Fritz Reiner
Frederick Martin “Fritz” Reiner was a prominent conductor of opera and symphonic music in the twentieth century.-Biography:...
, Artur Rodziński
Artur Rodzinski
Artur Rodziński was a Polish conductor of opera and symphonic music. He is especially noted for his tenures as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic in the 1930s and 1940s.-Biography:...
, Hans Rosbaud
Hans Rosbaud
Hans Rosbaud , was an Austrian conductor, particularly associated with the music of the twentieth century....
, Hermann Scherchen
Hermann Scherchen
Hermann Scherchen was a German conductor.-Life:Scherchen was originally a violist and played among the violas of the Bluthner Orchestra of Berlin while still in his teens...
, Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
, George Szell
George Szell
George Szell , originally György Széll, György Endre Szél, or Georg Szell, was a Hungarian-born American conductor and composer...
, Arturo Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini was an Italian conductor. One of the most acclaimed musicians of the late 19th and 20th century, he was renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his photographic memory...
, Bruno Walter
Bruno Walter
Bruno Walter was a German-born conductor. He is considered one of the best known conductors of the 20th century. Walter was born in Berlin, but is known to have lived in several countries between 1933 and 1939, before finally settling in the United States in 1939...
and Felix Weingartner
Felix Weingartner
Paul Felix von Weingartner, Edler von Münzberg was an Austrian conductor, composer and pianist.-Biography:...
.
Kipnis showed signs of vocal deterioration during the 1940s and he retired from the Met in 1946. He made his last concert appearance in 1951. Since his debut in 1915, he had sung at least 108 roles, often in more than one language, and his performances in opera and oratorio numbered more than 1600.
He died in Westport, Connecticut
Westport, Connecticut
-Neighborhoods:* Saugatuck – around the Westport railroad station near the southwestern corner of the town – a built-up area with some restaurants, stores and offices....
in May 1978, aged 87.
Critical appreciation
Among Kipnis's most celebrated roles were the bass parts in operas by MozartWolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
and Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
, as well as the title role in Mussorgsky
Modest Mussorgsky
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky was a Russian composer, one of the group known as 'The Five'. He was an innovator of Russian music in the romantic period...
's Boris Godunov
Boris Godunov (opera)
Boris Godunov is an opera by Modest Mussorgsky . The work was composed between 1868 and 1873 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is Mussorgsky's only completed opera and is considered his masterpiece. Its subjects are the Russian ruler Boris Godunov, who reigned as Tsar during the Time of Troubles,...
and the part of Rocco in Fidelio
Fidelio
Fidelio is a German opera in two acts by Ludwig van Beethoven. It is Beethoven's only opera. The German libretto is by Joseph Sonnleithner from the French of Jean-Nicolas Bouilly which had been used for the 1798 opera Léonore, ou L’amour conjugal by Pierre Gaveaux, and for the 1804 opera Leonora...
by Beethoven. In Germany he also was renowned as a Verdi singer. He was a distinguished interpreter of German lieder and Russian songs, too.
During the 1920s and '30s, Kipnis's chief bass rivals were the vibrant Italians Nazzareno De Angelis
Nazzareno De Angelis
Nazzareno De Angelis was an Italian operatic bass, particularly associated with Verdi, Rossini and Wagner roles.-Career:...
, Ezio Pinza
Ezio Pinza
Ezio Pinza was an Italian basso opera singer with a rich, smooth and sonorous voice. He spent 22 seasons at New York's Metropolitan Opera, appearing in more than 750 performances of 50 operas...
and Tancredi Pasero
Tancredi Pasero
Tancredi Pasero was an Italian bass who enjoyed a long and distinguished singing career in his native country and abroad.-Career & recordings:...
in the Verdi repertoire, and the black-voiced Norwegian Ivar Andresen in the Wagner repertoire. None of these four competitors could match the breadth of Kipnis' musicianship, however, although their voices were also of exceptional quality.
His recordings of lieder by Brahms, Wolf and Schubert are highly prized today, as are his many impressive operatic recordings, especially those dating from the 1920s and '30s.
Family
Kipnis' son Igor KipnisIgor Kipnis
Igor Kipnis was a well-known American harpsichordist and pianist.-Biography:Born in Berlin, the son of Russian bass Alexander Kipnis, Igor Kipnis moved to the United States with his family in 1938. He learned the piano with his maternal grandfather, Heniot Levy; attended the Westport School of...
(1930–2002) was a celebrated harpsichordist.
Following in similar creative footsteps, Kipnis's grandson, Jeremy R. Kipnis (born 1965), has become known as a photographer, record producer, film director, and recently creator of 'The Kipnis Studio Standard - The 21st Century Ultimate Screening Room Design', an evolution of George Lucas's and Tom Holman's THX Motion Picture & Sound Standards. http://www.kipnis-studios.com/The_Kipnis_Studio_Standard/Home_Theater_-_2_08.html
Recordings
CD reissues of his recorded work include:The Best of Alexander Kipnis - arias and songs by Wagner, Mozart, Verdi, Gounod, Brahms, Meyerbeer, Wolf and Halevy in recordings selected by his son, Igor Kipnis, and issued by Pearl (Pavilion Records Ltd.), GEMM CD 9451.
"Alexander Kipnis, Mussorgsky, Boris Godunov" contains excerpts from Boris recorded in 1945 by RCA and a selection of Russian arias and songs. album 60522-2-RG
Meanwhile, the Austrian firm, Preiser Records, has also issued several well-filled CD recitals devoted to Kipnis.
Sources
- Shawe-Taylor, Desmond: Kipnis, Alexander in 'The New Grove Dictionary of OperaNew Grove Dictionary of OperaThe New Grove Dictionary of Opera is an encyclopedia of opera, considered to be one of the best general reference sources on the subject. It is the largest work on opera in English, and in its printed form, amounts to 5,448 pages in four volumes....
', ed. Stanley Sadie (London, 1992) ISBN 0-333-73432-7 - Operastars.com (Igor Kipnis)