Remembering Norman Treigle

The first opera I saw in the theater, in 1967, was Mussorgsky's “Boris Godunov”, in English, performed by the Baltimore Lyric Opera. This was the Rimsky-Korsakov “orchestration” – actually Rimsky's changes to his dead friend's opera go a lot further than that word suggests – since Mussorgsky's original was considered too crude and amateurish to perform until quite recently. The sets, stark, stylized and very effective, were by Ming Cho Lee, and Leo Mueller conducted. My friend Tristan Rhodes, who later worked with Herbert von Karajan at the Salzburg Festival, was the assistant conductor. The stage director was Tito Cappobianco. Helen Vanni, who Like Mueller, taught at the Peabody Conservatory, sang Marina. The distinguished American tenor Brian Sullivan, then near the end of his career, was Grigori; Raymond Wolanski sang Pimen, and Spiro Malas, Varlaam. I don't have a very clear memory of their performances, although they were all fine singers and competent actors, but I will never forget the Boris: the New Orleans-born Norman Treigle (1927-1975).

Treigle was the epitome of the “singing actor,” a mesmerizing stage animal. Tall and thin, gaunt almost, Treigle made the guilt-stricken Tsar, one of the greatest roles in opera, absolutely believable. Majestic in the Coronation scene, he inspired true pity and terror in the Clock Scene; when the hallucinating Boris saw the murdered Tsarevitch's ghost appear upstage left, the whole audience shifted audibly, staring upstage trying to see the child's ghost that Treigle made you believe must really be there. By the time Treigle collapsed and fell head first down the flight of stairs from the throne in the Death Scene, as 3,000 people gasped out loud, not only was the fate of Boris Godunov sealed, mine was too. I've been to the opera hundreds of times since that great performance, but I never saw Norman Treigle again.

After the performance I wrote him a fan letter, and Mr. Treigle sent me a signed photograph of himself in the role. He also wrote me a very kind letter. Over the next several years we corresponded a few times; he sent me a great photo of his terrifying makeup for “Mefistofele,” in which he made a huge sensation at NYCO, with Carol Neblett wearing nothing as Helen of Troy, and Treigle wearing a body stocking that was more scandalous than nothing.

Treigle was often compared to the great Russian bass Fyodor Chaliapin (1873-1938), whose acting was one of the artistic wonders of the world. Stanislavsky wrote that Chaliapin's acting helped inspire him to develop his famous Method. Like Chaliapin, Treigle was willing to sacrifice musical values for theatrical effect, using rubato and parlando very freely, and like Chaliapin tall, physically commanding and extremely lithe, nearly balletic. That fall down the stairs was business devised by Chaliapin. In the theater, even great actors “borrow.”

Treigle's voice was dark, very large and powerful, capable of many colors, even throughout the whole range, with a secure top and commanding low notes. This was a voice with “face,” unique as the man's own face, and like it, somewhat gaunt. Some critics considered the voice less than beautiful, and although the question of vocal beauty is always subjective, I would agree that there have been more beautiful bass voices. It was, however, a voice of the highest quality, instantly recognizable (for me, the essential ingredient of vocal greatness), and it was always deployed with the finest musicianship and taste.

Treigle made his debut in 1947 in New Orleans in the small role of the Duke in Gounod's “Romeo et Juliette”. In 1953 he reached what was to become his artistic home,the New York City Opera. For twenty years he was the most important bass in the Americas. He never sang at the Met, and he died, tragically, as he was reaching international fame, especially in the title role of Boito's “Mefistofele”. Because his voice was dark, powerful and saturnine, he specialized in villainous roles. He was Boito's Devil, a role he also took in the works of Gounod (“Faust”) and Berlioz (“The Damnation of Faust”). He made few commercial recordings, but some very fine ones. His Mefistofele (EMI) menaces Montserrat Caballe and the young Placido Domingo; With Sills, he recorded “The Tales of Hoffmann,” (Westminster) playing all three villains; and Handel's “Giuilo Cesare” (RCA), a performance that launched the Handel vogue in the US, although in a version that sounds strange to today's Handelians. Two recital records appeared on the Westminster label, but to my knowledge they have never been released on CD. Live recordings exist of “Giulio Cesare”, “The Tales of Hoffmann”, Rimsky-Korsakov's “Le Coq D'Or” (all with Sills), Carlyle Floyd's “Susannah”, “Markheim”, and “The Sojourner and Mollie Sinclair”, and a few others. More may well exist, as yet unknown.

As with many great singers, there is a tantalizing "lost recording" that should have happened, but never did. He was scheduled to record Henry the Eighth in Donizetti's “Anna Bolena” with Sills, but died too soon. (Paul Plishka sang instead.) I know this because he told me he was planning to record it in London “if all goes well,” in the last letter I received from him. Only recently, in Brian Morgan's biography of him, “Strange Child of Chaos: Norman Treigle”, I learned that he suffered from chronic insomnia, and died of an accidental overdose of sleeping pills, probably not long after he wrote that last letter to me. He was a great musician, a great actor, and a good man who treated a young fan he never met with kindness and respect. He was my first great singer, and it was my good fortune to hear him in one of his most important roles on my very first night at the opera.