Reri Grist

Reri Grist (* February 29, 1932 in New York City ), a singer in the vocal range soprano / coloratura soprano, one of the first African- American opera singers with an international career.

Biography and artistic work

The artist grew up in New York City. She attended the High School of Music and Art and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Music from Queens College, City University of New York, from. Even as a child she appeared on stages on Broadway in drama performances and musicals. In 1957 she was in the original line-up of West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein. She played the Consuelo and first sang the song Somewhere. They then engaged the New York Philharmonic Orchestra with Bernstein as a conductor for the soprano solo in Mahler's Fourth Symphony. With this orchestra she sang in the years following concerts again with Bernstein, Nadia Boulanger, Pierre Boulez and Michael Gielen. In 1959 she appeared at the Santa Fe Opera, where she ( Die Fledermaus ) and Blondie sang ( The Abduction from the Seraglio) her first Adele. Here they heard Igor Stravinsky, whereupon he invited her, his Rossignol sing with him as conductor at the Washington Opera Society.

Her first appearance in Europe was in 1960 as a guest at the Cologne Opera, where she sang the Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute. In the summer of the same year she became a member of the Zurich Opera, where she sang, among others, Zerbinetta ( Ariadne auf Naxos), Sophie ( Der Rosenkavalier ) and Gilda ( Rigoletto ) for the first time. Thus began her meteoric career. In 1962 she sang at the Glyndebourne Festival and the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. The Vienna State Opera engaged her in 1963, where she sang twenty three years. In the same year she appeared as Rosina ( Il Barbiere di Siviglia ) with Hermann Prey in a production by Günther Rennert at the San Francisco Opera for the first time. There followed several seasons in which they with Alfredo Kraus, Manon with Stuart Burrows, Susanna with Geraint Evans and Oscar portrayed among others Gilda with Leontyne Price.

1964 debuted Reri Grist as Zerbinetta at the Salzburg Festival. During the twelve subsequent festival summer they enjoyed great success as Susanna (Le nozze di Figaro ), Blondie ( The Abduction from the Seraglio), Despina ( Così fan tutte ) and Papagena ( The Magic Flute ) in the unforgettable productions by Günther Rennert and Giorgio Strehler and with the conductor Karl Böhm, Zubin Mehta and Herbert von Karajan.

Her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York was in 1966 again as Rosina. Here she sang twelve seasons multiple roles in their field including Olympia ( Les Contes d' Hoffmann), Adina (L' elisir d' amore ), Norina ( Don Pasquale ), Oscar ( Un ballo in maschera ) and Zerbinetta with the greats of their time - Nicolai Gedda, Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo, Walter Berry, Christa Ludwig and Tatiana Troyanos.

At the Bavarian State Opera, she appeared from 1967 and until 1983, including as Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro with Dietrich Fischer- Dieskau and Hermann Prey, Aminta in The Silent Woman with Donald Grobe, Zerbinetta and Nanetta in Falstaff with Dietrich Fischer- Dieskau.

Reri Grist gave guest performances at La Scala, the Chicago Lyric Opera, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, at the Holland Festival and at the Vienna Festival. Directors with whom she had worked in several successful productions, for example, Otto Schenk, Lotfi Mansouri, Ruth Berghaus, Nathaniel Merrill and Axel Corti.

1991 ended Reri Grist her career on the opera stage at the Nederlandse Opera in Morton Feldman's Neither to a text by Samuel Beckett.

The artist gave several recitals in Europe and the United States. My second concert repertoire included, inter alia, works by Bach, Mozart's C Minor Mass, Requiem and concert arias, Gabriel Fauré's Requiem, Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, Nono's Canti di vita e d' amore, Webern opp. 13, 15, 16, and Arnold Schoenberg's Herzgewächse. She performed in concerts with the conductor Seiji Ozawa, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Friedrich Cerha and others.

In December 2007, she appeared again on Broadway as a soloist at the gala Broadway Cares / Equity Fights AIDS for the 50 - year anniversary of Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story with members of the original line-up. She sang as then Somewhere.

1981 to 1982, the artist was a professor of voice at the School of Music, Indiana University, Bloomington. Then she held until 1997 a professor of voice at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich. They also held master classes, among other things, at the Metropolitan Opera ( Lindemann Young Artist Development Program ) in 2008, at the Escuela Superior della Reina Sofia Madrid 2008/2009, the Opera Studio of the Hamburg State Opera in 2008, at the International Opera Studio in Zurich in 2007, at the San Francisco Opera ( Merola Program) 2002/2003 and at the Ravinia Steans Institute (IL ) from 1992 to 1997.

An extensive discography and various TV and video recordings documenting their great musical spectrum.

1966 married Reri Grist and Dr. Ulf Thomson, Head of Department of Music SR 1977 to 1981, head of the editorial Symphony Orchestra / Symphonic Music of the NDR from 1981 to 1987 and director of the Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin from 1987 to 1991.

Discography (selection)

  • West Side Story ( Area USA 1958)
  • Mahler Symphony No. 4 (CBS 1964)
  • The Impresario ( German Grammophon 1967)
  • Don Giovanni ( German Grammophon 1974)
  • Best of Mozart ( German Grammophon 2002)

DVD-Video ( selection)

  • Ariadne auf Naxos ( inter alia with Sena Jurinac ) 1965
  • The Abduction from the Seraglio ( inter alia with Edita Gruber ) 1980

Swell

  • David Hamilton: The Metropolitan Opera Encyclopedia, New York 1987
  • Karl Kutsch / Leo belt: Large Sängerlexikon. Volume One: A-L, Bern / Stuttgart, 1987, Sp 1163
Walter Berry (bass-baritone) Die schweigsame Frau Falstaff (opera) Lyric Opera of Chicago Luigi Nono Integrated Authority File
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