Claramae Turner
Encyclopedia
Claramae Turner is an American
opera
singer. She is perhaps best known for singing You'll Never Walk Alone
and some of June Is Bustin' Out all Over in the musical film Carousel
, adapted from the Rodgers and Hammerstein stage musical of the same name.
Born in Dinuba, California
, she was a contralto
with the Metropolitan Opera
during the late 1940s and early 1950s, and also sang with the New York City Opera
. She created the role of Madame Flora in Gian Carlo Menotti
's The Medium
, reprising it in an episode of Omnibus
on television. She also recorded the role of Ma Moss in Aaron Copland
's The Tender Land
(opposite Joy Clements
and Norman Treigle
), and one of her roles at the Met was that of Gertrud in an English
version of Engelbert Humperdinck's opera
Hänsel und Gretel, starring Risë Stevens
and Nadine Conner
. This performance was one of the first Metropolitan Opera record albums of a complete opera ever released (by Columbia Masterworks Records
). Miss Turner reprised the role on television in an installment of "NBC Television Opera Theatre".
All of these early television appearances were live, not done on film or videotape.
Turner also sang the role of the Nurse in the Met's famous 1946 production of Charles Gounod
's Roméo et Juliette, starring Jussi Björling
and Bidu Sayão
.
On radio
, she sang the role of Ulrica in conductor Arturo Toscanini
's 1954 broadcast performance of Verdi's Un ballo in maschera
, starring Herva Nelli
, Jan Peerce
, and Robert Merrill
. This performance was later released on LP
and CD by RCA Victor.
In 1956, Turner appeared in her only film, Rodgers and Hammerstein
's Carousel
, based on their stage success
. In the film, she played the role of Nettie, and along with Barbara Ruick
and others, sang the songs June is Bustin' Out All Over and A Real Nice Clambake, while soloing on "You'll Never Walk Alone
" (reprised at the finale by Shirley Jones
, several other members of the cast including Turner and Ruick, and mixed chorus).
She sang the role of Nettie again in a Command Records
studio cast recording of Carousel
, starring Alfred Drake
and Roberta Peters
, released in the early 1960s. (This version has never been published on Compact Disc.)
The song I Left My Heart in San Francisco
was written for Turner, and it was she, not Tony Bennett
, who originally sang it. However, Tony Bennett first recorded it.
Albums have recently been released of Turner featured in complete live recordings of Verdi's La forza del destino
, starring Zinka Milanov
and Mario del Monaco
in a performance conducted by Walter Herbert
, and the Verdi Requiem
, conducted by Guido Cantelli
.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
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...
singer. She is perhaps best known for singing You'll Never Walk Alone
You'll Never Walk Alone (song)
"You'll Never Walk Alone" is a show tune from the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel.In the musical, in the second act, Nettie Fowler, the cousin of the female protagonist Julie Jordan, sings "You'll Never Walk Alone" to comfort and encourage Julie when her husband, Billy Bigelow, the...
and some of June Is Bustin' Out all Over in the musical film Carousel
Carousel (film)
Carousel is a 1956 film adaptation of the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical of the same name which, in turn, was based on Ferenc Molnár's non-musical play Liliom. The 1956 Carousel film stars Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones, and was directed by Henry King...
, adapted from the Rodgers and Hammerstein stage musical of the same name.
Born in Dinuba, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, she was a contralto
Contralto
Contralto is the deepest female classical singing voice, with the lowest tessitura, falling between tenor and mezzo-soprano. It typically ranges between the F below middle C to the second G above middle C , although at the extremes some voices can reach the E below middle C or the second B above...
with 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...
during the late 1940s and early 1950s, and also sang with the New York City Opera
New York City Opera
The New York City Opera is an American opera company located in New York City.The company, called "the people's opera" by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was founded in 1943 with the aim of making opera financially accessible to a wide audience, producing an innovative choice of repertory, and...
. She created the role of Madame Flora in Gian Carlo Menotti
Gian Carlo Menotti
Gian Carlo Menotti was an Italian-American composer and librettist. Although he often referred to himself as an American composer, he kept his Italian citizenship. He wrote the classic Christmas opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, among about two dozen other operas intended to appeal to popular...
's The Medium
The Medium
The Medium is a short two-act dramatic opera with words and music by Gian Carlo Menotti. Commissioned by Columbia University, its first performance was there on 8 May 1946. The opera's first professional production was presented on a double bill with Menotti's The Telephone at the Heckscher...
, reprising it in an episode of Omnibus
Omnibus (US TV series)
Omnibus is an American, commercially sponsored, educational television series.-History:Broadcast live primarily on Sunday afternoons at 4:00pm Eastern time, from November 9, 1952 until 1961. Omnibus originally aired on CBS, and later on Sunday evenings on ABC. The program finally moved to NBC in...
on television. She also recorded the role of Ma Moss in Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers"...
's The Tender Land
The Tender Land
The Tender Land is an opera with music by Aaron Copland and libretto by Horace Everett, a pseudonym for Erik Johns. The opera tells of a farm family in the Midwest of the United States. Copland was inspired to write this opera after viewing the Depression-era photographs of Walker Evans and...
(opposite Joy Clements
Joy Clements
Joy Clements was an American lyric coloratura soprano who had a substantial opera and concert career from 1956 through the late 1970s. She notably sang regularly with both the New York City Opera and the Metropolitan Opera during the 1960s through the early 1970s...
and Norman Treigle
Norman Treigle
Norman Treigle was an American operatic bass-baritone, who was acclaimed for his great abilities as a singing-actor, and specialized in roles that evoked villainy and terror....
), and one of her roles at the Met was that of Gertrud in an English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
version of Engelbert Humperdinck's 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...
Hänsel und Gretel, starring Risë Stevens
Risë Stevens
Risë Stevens is a retired American operatic mezzo-soprano.-Professional life:Stevens studied at New York's Juilliard School for three years. She went to Vienna, where she was trained by Marie Gutheil-Schoder and Herbert Graf. She made her début as Mignon in Prague in 1936 and stayed there until...
and Nadine Conner
Nadine Conner
Nadine Conner was an American operatic soprano, radio singer and music teacher.She was born in Compton, California as Evelyn Nadine Henderson, and was the descendent of some of the earliest non-Hispanic settlers in California.Diagnosed as a teenager with pulmonary disease, her doctor suggested she...
. This performance was one of the first Metropolitan Opera record albums of a complete opera ever released (by Columbia Masterworks Records
Columbia Masterworks Records
Columbia Masterworks Records was a record label started in 1927 by Columbia Records.It was intended for releases of classical music and artists, as opposed to popular music, which bore the regular Columbia logo. Masterworks Records' first release, in 1927, was a complete performance of the...
). Miss Turner reprised the role on television in an installment of "NBC Television Opera Theatre".
All of these early television appearances were live, not done on film or videotape.
Turner also sang the role of the Nurse in the Met's famous 1946 production of Charles Gounod
Charles Gounod
Charles-François Gounod was a French composer, known for his Ave Maria as well as his operas Faust and Roméo et Juliette.-Biography:...
's Roméo et Juliette, starring Jussi Björling
Jussi Björling
Johan Jonatan "Jussi" Björling was a Swedish tenor. One of the leading operatic singers of the 20th Century, Björling appeared frequently at the Royal Opera House in London, La Scala in Milan, and the Metropolitan Opera in New York City as well as at other major European opera...
and Bidu Sayão
Bidu Sayão
Bidú Sayão was a Brazilian opera soprano. One of Brazil's most famous musicians, Sayão was a leading artist of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City from 1937 to 1952.-Life and career:...
.
On radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
, she sang the role of Ulrica in conductor 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...
's 1954 broadcast performance of Verdi's Un ballo in maschera
Un ballo in maschera
Un ballo in maschera , is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi with text by Antonio Somma. The libretto is loosely based on an 1833 play, Gustave III, by French playwright Eugène Scribe who wrote about the historical assassination of King Gustav III of Sweden...
, starring Herva Nelli
Herva Nelli
Herva Nelli was an Italian-born operatic soprano.-Biography:Named after the French socialist Gustave Hervé, she was born in Florence, where she attended a convent school...
, Jan Peerce
Jan Peerce
Jan Peerce was an American operatic tenor. Peerce was an accomplished performer on the operatic and Broadway concert stages, in solo recitals, and as a recording artist. He is the father of film director Larry Peerce....
, and Robert Merrill
Robert Merrill
Robert Merrill was an American operatic baritone.-Early life:Merrill was born Moishe Miller, later known as Morris Miller, in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York, to tailor Abraham Miller, originally Milstein, and his wife Lillian, née Balaban, immigrants from Warsaw, Poland.His mother...
. This performance was later released on LP
LP album
The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...
and CD by RCA Victor.
In 1956, Turner appeared in her only film, Rodgers and Hammerstein
Rodgers and Hammerstein
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were a well-known American songwriting duo, usually referred to as Rodgers and Hammerstein. They created a string of popular Broadway musicals in the 1940s and 1950s during what is considered the golden age of the medium...
's Carousel
Carousel (film)
Carousel is a 1956 film adaptation of the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical of the same name which, in turn, was based on Ferenc Molnár's non-musical play Liliom. The 1956 Carousel film stars Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones, and was directed by Henry King...
, based on their stage success
Carousel (musical)
Carousel is the second stage musical by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II . The work premiered in 1945 and was adapted from Ferenc Molnár's 1909 play Liliom, transplanting its Budapest setting to the Maine coastline...
. In the film, she played the role of Nettie, and along with Barbara Ruick
Barbara Ruick
-Youth:Ruick was the daughter of actors Lurene Tuttle and Melville Ruick. She grew up acting out scenes with dolls, employing her mother as an audience. She attended Theodore Roosevelt High School , Burbank High School , and North Hollywood High School. She did little acting in high school but...
and others, sang the songs June is Bustin' Out All Over and A Real Nice Clambake, while soloing on "You'll Never Walk Alone
You'll Never Walk Alone (song)
"You'll Never Walk Alone" is a show tune from the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel.In the musical, in the second act, Nettie Fowler, the cousin of the female protagonist Julie Jordan, sings "You'll Never Walk Alone" to comfort and encourage Julie when her husband, Billy Bigelow, the...
" (reprised at the finale by Shirley Jones
Shirley Jones
Shirley Mae Jones is an American singer and actress of stage, film and television. In her six decades of television, she starred as wholesome characters in a number of well-known musical films, such as Oklahoma! , Carousel , and The Music Man...
, several other members of the cast including Turner and Ruick, and mixed chorus).
She sang the role of Nettie again in a Command Records
Command Records
Command Records was a record label founded by Enoch Light in 1959 and later associated with ABC-Paramount Records....
studio cast recording of Carousel
Carousel
A carousel , or merry-go-round, is an amusement ride consisting of a rotating circular platform with seats for riders...
, starring Alfred Drake
Alfred Drake
Alfred Drake was an American actor and singer.-Biography:Born as Alfred Capurro in New York City, the son of parents emigrated from Recco, Genoa, Drake began his Broadway career while still a student at Brooklyn College...
and Roberta Peters
Roberta Peters
Roberta Peters is an American coloratura soprano.One of the most prominent American singers to achieve lasting fame and success in opera, Peters is noted for her 35-year association with the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York...
, released in the early 1960s. (This version has never been published on Compact Disc.)
The song I Left My Heart in San Francisco
I Left My Heart in San Francisco
"I Left My Heart in San Francisco" is a popular song, written in 1954 by George Cory and Douglass Cross, and best known as the signature song of Tony Bennett...
was written for Turner, and it was she, not Tony Bennett
Tony Bennett
Tony Bennett is an American singer of popular music, standards, show tunes, and jazz....
, who originally sang it. However, Tony Bennett first recorded it.
Albums have recently been released of Turner featured in complete live recordings of Verdi's La forza del destino
La forza del destino
La forza del destino is an Italian opera by Giuseppe Verdi. The libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on a Spanish drama, Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino , by Ángel de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas, with a scene adapted from Friedrich Schiller's Wallensteins Lager. It was first performed...
, starring Zinka Milanov
Zinka Milanov
Zinka Milanov was a Croatian-born operatic spinto soprano who had a major career centred on the New York Metropolitan Opera.-Biography:...
and Mario del Monaco
Mario del Monaco
Mario Del Monaco was an Italian tenor who is regarded by his admirers as being one of the greatest dramatic tenors of the 20th century....
in a performance conducted by Walter Herbert
Walter Herbert (conductor)
Walter Herbert was an American conductor and impresario of German birth, as well as a world champion at contract bridge....
, and the Verdi Requiem
Requiem (Verdi)
The Messa da Requiem by Giuseppe Verdi is a musical setting of the Roman Catholic funeral mass for four soloists, double choir and orchestra. It was composed in memory of Alessandro Manzoni, an Italian poet and novelist much admired by Verdi. The first performance in San Marco in Milan on 22 May...
, conducted by Guido Cantelli
Guido Cantelli
Guido Cantelli was an Italian orchestral conductor.-Biography:Born in Novara, Italy, Cantelli was named Musical Director of La Scala, Milan on 16 November 1956 but his promising career was cut short only one week later by his death at the age of 36 in an aircraft crash in Paris, France.Cantelli...
.
External links
- Toscanini Discography http://home.earthlink.net/~jw3/index.html
- Amazon web page for Toscanini's recording of Un ballo in mascheraUn ballo in mascheraUn ballo in maschera , is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi with text by Antonio Somma. The libretto is loosely based on an 1833 play, Gustave III, by French playwright Eugène Scribe who wrote about the historical assassination of King Gustav III of Sweden...
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0009J2RVW/ - Amazon web page for excerpts from The Tender LandThe Tender LandThe Tender Land is an opera with music by Aaron Copland and libretto by Horace Everett, a pseudonym for Erik Johns. The opera tells of a farm family in the Midwest of the United States. Copland was inspired to write this opera after viewing the Depression-era photographs of Walker Evans and...
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000050HWV/ - Amazon web page for New Orleans Opera production of La forza del destinoLa forza del destinoLa forza del destino is an Italian opera by Giuseppe Verdi. The libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on a Spanish drama, Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino , by Ángel de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas, with a scene adapted from Friedrich Schiller's Wallensteins Lager. It was first performed...
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000CR7RJ8/ - Amazon web page for Verdi RequiemRequiemA Requiem or Requiem Mass, also known as Mass for the dead or Mass of the dead , is a Mass celebrated for the repose of the soul or souls of one or more deceased persons, using a particular form of the Roman Missal...
featuring Claramae Turner http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0007WFY1Q/ - Amazon web page for Carousel (film)Carousel (film)Carousel is a 1956 film adaptation of the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical of the same name which, in turn, was based on Ferenc Molnár's non-musical play Liliom. The 1956 Carousel film stars Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones, and was directed by Henry King...
soundtrack albumSoundtrack albumA soundtrack album is any album that incorporates music directly recorded from the soundtrack of a particular feature film or television program. In some cases, not all the tracks from the movie are included in the album; however there are rare cases of songs in the trailers that do not appear in...
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00005A7XD/