Alfred Piccaver
Alfred Piccaver, actually Peckover ( born February 24, 1884 in Long Sutton in Spalding, Lincolnshire, England; † September 23, 1958 in Vienna ) was a British opera singer (tenor ).
Life
Alfred Piccavers parents, some with Spanish ancestors immigrated in 1885 with him to the United States and lived in Albany. His father, Frederic Hermann Piccaver, worked as a chemist. He studied in New York electronics and also spent time working in the laboratory of Thomas Alva Edison. Due to his great musical gifts he received in 1905 a grant from the Metropolitan Opera. Heinrich Conried, director of the "Met", recognized his talent and sent him in 1907 to Angelo Neumann to the Prague National Theatre. There he continued his education at Ludmilla Prohaska Neumann and later in Milan, but also took on stage roles already. His inaugural presentation on September 9, 1907, of Fenton in Nicolai's The Merry Wives of Windsor. During the next three years were operas by Flotow, Gounod, Mozart, Puccini, Verdi and Wagner focuses his repertoire.
About an invitation from Mattia Battistini, had made a great impression on the Piccaver, he joined in 1910 for the first time at the Imperial Court Opera in Vienna. But only after the expiry of his contract Prague Piccaver could move to Vienna, where he was then 1912-31 and 1933-37 member of the ensemble and became the darling of the Viennese public. On the other hand, he also enjoyed so much that he turned down a contract offer from the Met, the time in Vienna. As a guest, he appeared at the opera in Chicago and in 1925 at the Covent Garden Opera in London 1923-1925. 1931 was due to ( erupted in 1927 ) disagreements over the amount of his salary to any extension of the contract with the Vienna Opera Theater. In between, he has appeared in Austria as a guest, his tours have taken him to the Salzburg Festival, Munich, Dresden, Budapest, Berlin, Stockholm and Paris. From 1 January 1933 Piccaver was again a member of the Vienna Opera Theater, he remained there to September 1, 1937.
The political situation in Austria and Germany led him in 1937 to emigrate to Britain. In addition to performances in the concert hall and radio studio, he was now an active teacher. In 1955 he returned to Vienna and took on 5 November of the year as a guest of honor at the reopening of the Vienna State Opera in part.
The audience loved Piccaver because of its beautiful tenor voice and his great tonal range. Piccaver excelled primarily as Rodolfo, ( Puccini called him " my ideal Rodolfo " ) Cavaradossi, Canio, Radames, Florestan, Lensky and Walther. Audio recordings of his vocal art have survived to this day, having already in 1912 also recorded for the record box office, first for Odeon, later for Vox, Polydor, German Grammophon, Decca and Vocalion.
He was buried in an honorary grave in devoted an urn niche in the arcades of the fire hall Simmering (Department ALI, number 27).