Music Chat: The Strangulated British Tenor, or How Peter Pears Turned Up In The Decca Turandot

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Hello friends. This is Dave Hurwitz, executive editor at classics today.com here with a story I have mentioned briefly previously, but I think deserves some attention in its wider aesthetic and historical context. Besides, it's a whopping good story. One of you mentioned in the comments in our greatest Schubert recording section. You know, five greatest Schubert recordings. I brought up the Peter Pears Benjamin Britten winterreise and one of you said acknowledge the great greatness of the performance but just said you couldn't tolerate Peter Pears particular voice.

[00:00:37]The voice of what Anna Russell called the strangled British tenor of which Pears is the iconic example. There were others. He had a major successor and for example Robert Tear. You know, he was one of them. Um it's a strange and local sound and there are lots of them in the vocal world. There's there's the Slavonic wobble that you hear in a lot of Eastern European sopranos. I mean that can peel paint in its upper register. You know, there are the German helden tenors. There's there's you know, the the French soubrette things like Mady Mesplé. I mean you know, there's just lots of vocal types that don't fall into the normal like soprano alto tenor bass categories.

[00:01:23]Um and the strangled British tenor is one of the most famous and yes, it's a a voice that only somebody from the UK could love possibly. I I think Pears was a fabulous artist.

[00:01:36]Let [snorts] me I I love it frankly and his voice never bothered me actually.

[00:01:40]But some people who are trained and you know, traditional operatic whatevers, you know, take issue take issue with the whole concept and the story here and it's a wonderful story that sort of illustrates how these things go on and what the politics is behind voice types of all things is how Peter Pears wound up in this recording, the Sutherland Pavarotti meta Puccini Turandot.

[00:02:10]Because Peter Pears never appeared, almost never, in Italian opera. His specialty was leader of centuries worth of leader and the works that Benjamin Britten wrote for him.

[00:02:24]Um and and you know, occasionally he was like in the St. Matthew Passion with Klemperer. You know, did some Bach and other stuff like that. But but Italian tenors, no way. Because you know, the Italian tenor voice, the ideal Italian tenor voice. Well, you had Pavarotti.

[00:02:40]Pavarotti was actually not a heroic tenor. He had a rather small voice. He was a lyric tenor. But you've got, you know, Franco Corelli and and you know, people like that. And if you wanted, you know, some more artistic but still heroic tenor type voices, there was Carlo Bergonzi.

[00:02:57]The Italians had their type of tenor voice. The Germans had their type of tenor voice. And Peter Pears did not fit into any of those categories. You could certainly not see Peter Pears singing Di quella pira in Il trovatore. That was just not going to be his thing. So, here he is in Turandot. But the role that he got in Turandot was the Emperor Altoum. It's a bit part, tiny tiny part. A little bit of what they call luxury casting where you get a big star to do a tiny little part. And the operatic world is full of things like that. You've got, even in the Solti Ring alone, you've got Kirsten Flagstad's Fricka and Joan Sutherland as the Woodbird. And [snorts] and before that you had um you had Elizabeth Schwarzkopf singing the high C's in the in the Furtwängler Tristan because Flagstad's voice wasn't up to the high C anymore, but the rest of it was fine. So So she just felt better [clears throat] having someone else take the high C's. I mean, there's all kinds of little sniglets like that in the universe of Italian opera. I mean, even in the in the James Levine Tosca with Renata Scotto, the jailer is sung by Itzhak Perlman.

[00:04:13]Some people don't notice that. Who actually had a lovely baritone voice. So Yeah. It happens for these small roles.

[00:04:20]Sometimes you get like, you know, big people or retired people or or, you know, I mean, I saw What was it? Peak Dom. Queen of Spades at the Met where they had Elizabeth Schwarzkopf singing the Countess. You know, who does that? One little little little aria.

[00:04:37]Um you know, with whatever voice she had left. So it happens. It happens. So that in itself is not so unusual. But this story comes to me from a former Decca executive. Uh big major executive at Decca, Remi Farkas by name, who owned a record shop up on Lexington Avenue in his retirement, Orpheus Remarkable Recordings. It was Lexington Avenue in in the '60s. Um and I used to go there after work constantly. And then he and his his buddy who was from from CBS, from Columbia Records. Uh Pierre Bourdieu I not Pierre Bourdieu.

[00:05:13]He was >> [laughter] >> He was the chef. But uh in any case, he and his colleague Um were were together there. They ran this little record store, boutique record store. And and Remi was an Italian opera guy. His greatest point of pride was that he had fired John Culshaw.

[00:05:34]Um that was his, you know, he bragged about the fact that he fired John Culshaw. It was the happiest day in his life. Um he was the brother-in-law of Giuseppe Di Stefano, one of the great Italian tenors and partners of Maria Callas, and he knew and loved Italian opera above all other things.

[00:05:54]And so, he was not um uh shall we say simpatico with the concept of the strangled English tenor.

[00:06:04]And he was not I think involved in the actual production of Turandot. Now, we we have the people here on the the list here back in 1972 when that recording came out. But, Peter Pears is in it. And the way he tells the story is that is that, you know, Peter Pears had not appeared in almost any Italian opera or any Italian opera recording, certainly not for Decca.

[00:06:29]And they got him to do the emperor because and this is the joke, it was an inside joke at Decca. If you look at the score, here is the score to Turandot, and we get to act two part part the second half where we have the riddle scene and all that stuff going on. Oh, let's see, 200 200 and 33. Yes, in the score, Puccini writes for the emperor in his entrance when he starts singing Emperor Altoum con voce stanca di vecchio decrepito, which means with the tired voice of a decrepit old man.

[00:07:12]And so it sounds. He comes in with "Angiura ben la tua croce mi costringe."

[00:07:22]You know, right? That's the Emperor Altoum, a decrepit old voice. Well, in 19 72, Peter Pears was so I guess he was what? 62. Actually, I think he was born in 1910.

[00:07:35]Um and he was hardly decrepit. I mean, he really wasn't. But, the joke of course is that you know, and he could have you know, he was he could have diddled his voice to sound decrepit. But, of course, according to my friend Remy, he didn't have to. He naturally sounded decrepit. [laughter] What they figured was they had a guy who had a tenor voice that which the Italian wing at Decca would find absolutely hilarious and absolutely appropriate because the natural tone of the strangled British tenor was, by Italian standards, decrepit.

[00:08:14]I mean, really decrepit. And uh and so, they got him and what they knew from a marketing point of view was that the English musical press would go crazy over having Sir Peter Pears appearing in in I don't know if he was a Sir then, but Peter Pears appearing in his one of his very few Italian opera roles. And sure enough, if you read the reviews of Turandot that came out of that time, this recording um one of its selling points and the role of the emperor is like, you know, three lines. It's tiny. Teeny, tiny role. But, that's [snorts] okay.

[00:08:56]Um you know, it was Oh, and in this wonderful bit of luxury casting, Sir Peter Pears agreed to take on the role of the Emperor Altoum.

[00:09:06]I mean, nobody says that the Emperor Altoum is near death and is, you know, has the sound of a of gross decrepitude, at least as far as fans of Italian opera were concerned.

[00:09:22]But, that's how he got into that Turandot because his name brought luster to the production as a bit of luxury casting. And the Italian wing at Decca, which was quite annoyed with John Culshaw and all of those people, um you know, for their their particular tastes, they would never know that the whole thing was was a, uh, a joke.

[00:09:47]A joke at the expense of the national preference for the strangled tenor voice.

[00:09:54]And so there it was, Peter Pears in the in the Mehta-Sutherland-Pavarotti-Turandot as Emperor Altoum. Now, one's preference for vocal timbre is obviously very subjective. I mean, Maria Callas, who is, you know, Maria Callas, has always excited controversy because the voice was not conventionally beautiful, and some people found it to be just atrocious, and others found it to be the most expressive instrument on God's earth. So, it's all a matter of taste.

[00:10:27]>> [snorts] >> It really is. But, I just thought this was a a lovely, lovely little story that illustrates the national characteristics, our national tastes behind some of these things, and also says a lot about about the, you know, the inner workings of the, uh, of the record industry itself, and the things that people do, and there's all kinds of stuff that we, I don't know about, we don't know about, how these things happen the way they happen, and what people thought about them at the time. But, this is one story I do know about, and so I wanted to share it with you, and I hope you enjoyed it. So, keep on listening, friends. Thanks for joining me. Take care.