William Warfield, the great American bass-baritone who built an equally accomplished career as a teacher of voice based in the Chicago area, died Sunday night August 25th, 2002, at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, as the result of complications suffered from a fall in his South Side Chicago home last month. He was 82.
Mr. Warfield was perhaps best known for his interpretations of American music, offering the American and world premieres of classic songs by Aaron Copland and portraying the role of Porgy in the landmark United States and European tours of Gershwin’s folk opera Porgy and Bess in the early 1950s—and on the definitive 1963 RCA recording of scenes from the opera—in all cases opposite his then wife, legendary soprano Leontyne Price. The two were married in 1952, separated in 1958 and divorced in 1972, but remained close friends.
Longtime friend, author and broadcaster Studs Terkel, recalled Mr. Warfield on Monday as “one of the most loving artists of our time. He was a deeply religious man, but his religion was that of the whole world. When I would have him on my program, he would talk about how when he sang a requiem, he was with God, that music itself was godlike to him. He was a great teacher, a delightful conversationalist and a man who always spoke the truth.”
An exceptional actor, Mr. Warfield also played Joe in the 1951 MGM remake of Showboat, singing the Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein II classic “Ol’ Man River,” and was a member of the original Broadway cast of Marc Blitzstein’s opera Regina in 1949.
Mr. Warfield was also an accomplished singer in the traditional European repertoire and a particular advocate of the oratorio literature including Handel’s Messiah and works by Bach, Mendelssohn, Honegger and others. Known for his distinctive baritone and superb vocal clarity, as recently as last month he performed in Oregon with the trio Three Generations that he founded with bass-baritone Benjamin Matthews and the young Chicago lyric baritone Robert Sims. “He was the most giving person I have ever known,” said Sims, who teaches voice at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. “Just last week in the hospital he was coaching students. He even asked a German-speaking nurse there if he could sing a Schumann lied for her [“Du bist wie eine Blume,” from Myrten, Op. 25]—and he did, even though he was flat on his back.”
Mr. Warfield made his Town Hall debut in New York City in 1950, and though the world of opera was essentially closed to black performers then, was signed almost immediately to a 35-concert tour of Australia and then to his role in Showboat. He gave the U.S. premiere of Copland’s “Old American Songs” with the composer at the piano in 1951. They were such a success that Copland composed a second set, and the two men gave that collection its world premiere in 1953.
Born in West Helena, Arkansas, on Jan. 22, 1920, Mr. Warfield moved as a small boy with his family to Rochester, New York. His father moved the family in search of better employment and educational opportunities. It was a fateful change of location as Mr. Warfield later won a full scholarship to that city’s fabled Eastman School of Music, subsequently earning his bachelor’s degree in voice and studying for his master’s degrees there. Before making his major classical debut, Mr. Warfield was also in the national touring company of the Harold Rome musical Call Me Mister, where his fellow cast members included a number of other future stars of the entertainment world—Buddy Hackett, Carl Reiner, and Bob Fosse. His acting career also brought him to the lead role of “De Lawd” in the 1957 and 1959 Hallmark Hall of Fame television productions of Marc Connelly’s The Green Pastures on NBC. An active narrator as well, Mr. Warfield won the 1983 spoken word category Grammy Award for Copland’s “A Lincoln Portrait.”
Mr. Warfield became professor of music at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana in 1975 and later chairman of its voice department, retiring from the downstate school in 1990. In 1994, after guest professorships at Illinois State University and the University of Texas at San Antonio, he joined the faculty of Northwestern University at the invitation of Bernard J. Dobroski, dean of NU’s music school. “I felt strongly that Bill belonged on a faculty in the Chicago area,” Dobroski said. “He remained one of our most loyal and active teachers quite literally until his death.”
A recipient of numerous honorary degrees, Mr. Warfield also served on the board of the Lyric Opera Center for American Artists and was a past president of the National Association of Negro Musicians. Survivors include two brothers, Thaddeus and Vern Warfield, both of Rochester, N.Y., and numerous nephews and nieces. Funeral arrangements in Rochester were private. A public memorial service were held at Northwestern in the fall.
