I am sorry to learn that the American tenor John Aler has died. Aler appeared with major orchestras and performed in some of the world’s great opera houses. A notable exception was the Met, whose gargantuan hall he regarded as unsuited to his leggiero voice.
I heard him in person once, when he came to Philadelphia back in 1986, to participate in a series of concerts of Berlioz’s 90-minute symphony-of-sorts “Roméo et Juliette,” with Riccardo Muti conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Westminster Choir. Rounding out the triumvirate of soloists were Jessye Norman and Simon Estes. Happily, everyone reconvened at Memorial Hall in Fairmount Park to record the piece for EMI. If I remember correctly, there is a poster from this very series of concerts adorning the stairwell of Westminster Choir College’s Bristol Chapel in Princeton.
Aler made some fine recordings: he was recognized with four Grammy Awards, including those for Best Vocal Soloist Performance and Best Classical Album (both for Berlioz’s Requiem) in 1986, Best Opera Recording (Handel’s “Semele”) in 1994, and Best Classical Album (Bartok’s “The Wooden Prince” and “Cantata Profana”) also in 1994.
Certainly these were impressive achievements, and by no means isolated peaks in his discography. However, Aler makes it clear in a conversation with Bruce Duffie (linked below) that while recordings are a great resource, they are no substitute for the real thing.
“…[T]here is nothing like being in a performance,” he says. “There’s no recording, there is no television, there is nothing like being in that hall, even when you listen to it on the radio, or when you hear a tape of it. Hearing it you think, well gee, that was great but gosh I’d have loved to have been there. I’ll never forget how really sad I felt when I heard a tape of a great performance of Turandot from San Francisco from ’70-something with Pavarotti and Caballé. It’s some of the greatest singing I’ve ever heard. As great as that tape was, I wanted to be there! That’s the exciting thing about music, about art really. I went to see the Monet exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art recently. We’re so used to seeing these images on posters, on postage stamps, on mugs, God, they’re everywhere! But when you go and actually see the paintings, it’s just really staggering; it’s incredible. It’s so important because it makes you remember that the work is the thing, no matter how many reproductions are made and how many calendars you pin up on your wall. You think it is pretty, but it’s not! The real thing is primarily stunning, and that’s what a great performance is.”
Aler died on Saturday at the age of 73. R.I.P.
“Where’er you walk” from Handel’s “Semele”
From Rameau’s “Les Boreades”
In duet with Mariana Cioromila (Cioromila died in June)
From Adolphe Adam’s, “Le Postillon de Lonjumeau”
Vaughan Williams (“On Wenlock Edge”), Bach, and Schumann
“The Green-Eyed Dragon” by Charles Wolsely & Greatrex Newman, from a fun album called “Songs We Forgot to Remember”
A conversation with Bruce Duffie