The term Golden Age of Singing has always seemed to me to be 25 years before the present time, no matter which time that is,” says Bill Mason with a laugh. As the Lyric Opera has been completely sold out and operating in the black for more than ten years, it’s his party and he’ll laugh if he wants to. Midway through a phenomenally successful season, and still basking in the afterglow of a realization of Handel’s Alcina that had both audiences and critics clamoring, the general director of the Lyric Opera of Chicago has good reason to believe that if there ever was a Golden Age, it is now.
“When I was growing up in Chicago in the 50’s and 60’s,” Mason says, “(Critic) Claudia Cassidy used to write about the golden age of singing in the 20’s and 30’s. But I was hearing Maria Callas, Renata Tebaldi, Giuseppe Di Stefano, Bjoerling, Steber, Bastianini, Simionato!” Needless to say, that age seemed pretty golden to young Mason. So does the present one, even though the director admits it would be kind of tough to cast the big Verdi operas like Forza, Ballo or Aïda. On the other hand, he reminds us that there are many more opera companies than there were 20 or 30 years ago, and their seasons are much longer.
“When Lyric Opera started in 1954,” he says, “we began on November 1st and the San Francisco season was already over by then. There was no Houston, no Seattle, no Miami, no Dallas. Even in Europe, the companies were not international in the same way they are now. Covent Garden did stuff in English, Munich did it in German.” In addition, Mason cites a far better understanding of the bel canto, Mozart and Handel styles among singers of today. And when speaking of singers, he clearly believes we are home free.
“You look at someone like Reneé Fleming. We talk of Tebaldi and Schwarzkopf, and they were great singers. But Renata Tebaldi sang in Italian and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf sang mainly in German. Reneé Fleming sings in six or seven languages. She sings beautiful Handel, beautiful Mozart and Strauss. The singers we have today, the Susan Grahams, the Kasarovas! I can’t buy into the idea that we are not living in a golden age of singing. I think most ages have their golden element. When has there ever been a better Tristan and Isolde than Ben and Jane? Never. Not in terms of musicianship. I don’t think Melchoir and Flagstad ever sang a really complete performance of it.”
This golden age concept would seem to be mainly a matter of memories. And those can be curiously deceptive. “I grew up in Chicago,” Mason says, “and I remember very vividly a performance that stands out in my mind as golden age. It was the opening night Falstaff here in 1958. I was a kid at the time, but I knew the opera and I loved it. The singers were Tito Gobbi, Cornell MacNeil, Giulietta Simionato and Tebaldi with Serafin conducting! Well, a friend of mine gave me a pirated CD of that recently, and I’ve got to tell you it was pretty all-over-the-place musically. The voices were magnificent, the individual voices sublime, but the ensemble, the general sloppiness of it all! The orchestra wasn’t as good as it is now; they didn’t rehearse as much, perhaps, or maybe it was opening night nerves. Who knows? But it was kind of a revelation to me.
“You can’t look back,” he declares. “I don’t have that much time for nostalgia. Certainly, dramatically, we wouldn’t want to go back 40 years when you had costumed concerts in many cases. So I think in every way, opera is better than it was 10, 20, 50 years ago. Excuse me, but we’re just finishing a wonderful era of Domingo and Pavarotti. I am enormously optimistic that it will continue to get better. The training is better; there has never been anybody better than the American singer. There may be a temporary dearth of singers for a certain repertoire, but there are wonderful singers out there. I feel like we are always in a golden age of singing.”
William Mason, general director of the Lyric Opera of Chicago since 1997, got his start with the company in its premier season in 1954 when he joined the Lyric Children’s Chorus. In 1954 and 1956 he sang the Shepherd Boy in Tosca in the Lyric’s famous production with Eleanor Steber, Renata Tebaldi, Giuseppe Di Stefano, Jussi Bjoerling and Tito Gobbi. He joined the Lyric administration staff in 1962, becoming the director of artistic and production operations in 1981. Although most of his career has been at the Lyric, he has served in various capacities with the San Francisco Opera, the Cincinnati Opera and the Light Opera of Manhattan. In 1971 he was assistant to Felix Popper, music administrator of New York City Opera. A Chicago native, Mason earned his bachelor of music degree in voice from Roosevelt University.
