Margaret Tynes, an American soprano who was acclaimed in Europe however uncared for within the United States at a time when Black singers have been newly breaking into the operatic world, died on March 7 in Silver Spring, Md. She was 104.
Her nephew Richard Roberts mentioned she died in a nursing dwelling.
In the Sixties and ’70s Ms. Tynes’s incendiary, full-throated voice was heard in roles like Aida and Salomé at opera homes in Vienna, Prague and Budapest, incomes excessive reward on the continent — “an exceptional voice, intense in every coloring, vibrant and dramatic,” Milan’s Corriere della Sera newspaper wrote — even whereas U.S. critics have been cooler. The Süddeutsche Zeitung of Munich wrote of her efficiency in Benjamin Britten’s “The War Requiem” that “what Britten expects of a woman’s voice can only be achieved by a singer of Margaret Tynes’s caliber.”
But she didn’t make her Metropolitan Opera debut till 1974, when she was 55, in a run of three performances within the title position of Janacek’s “Jenufa.” That run each started and ended her profession there.
Ms. Tynes grew up within the segregated South and gained a measure of American fame within the Fifties — recording “A Drum Is a Woman” with Duke Ellington, singing heartfelt renditions of “Negro spirituals” on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and showing with Harry Belafonte within the musical “Sing, Man, Sing.” She additionally sang on the funeral of W.C. Handy, the musician often called “the father of the blues,” and toured the usS.R. with Mr. Sullivan’s present in 1958.
Her breakthrough in opera, the style that outlined her profession, got here in Europe in 1961, when she sang Salomé in Luchino Visconti’s manufacturing on the Spoleto Festival in Italy. Time journal described her as “moving about the stage with catlike grace, her rich, ringing voice zooming with ease through the high, precarious lines,” and as a “girl with veins of fire.”
American opera would show to be a more durable hurdle for Ms. Tynes.
In the historical past of Black American opera singers, Ms. Tynes was “from a lost generation,” Naomi André, a University of North Carolina musicologist and opera specialist, mentioned in an interview.
Born 22 years after Marian Anderson, who didn’t make her debut on the Metropolitan Opera till age 57 in 1955, Ms. Tynes was nonetheless older than Black opera stars like Leontyne Price, Grace Bumbry, Shirley Verrett and Jessye Norman.
Those singers entered their prime because the marches and demonstrations of the civil rights motion have been bringing down racial obstacles. Ms. Tynes, in contrast, was already in Europe.
She was thus “an interesting bridge” between Ms. Anderson and the newer technology of Black opera singers, mentioned Ms. André, who has written about Black opera singers. Ms. André famous that Ms. Tynes, her neglect however, had an “incredible” voice, and advised that her success in Europe was an affidavit to her singular expertise.
Her one main recital on disk, a blistering assortment of arias by Verdi and Richard Strauss, was launched by the Qualiton label in Hungary in 1962. In a 2021 episode of the podcast “Counter Melody” that was dedicated to her, the American singer Daniel Gundlach famous that Ms. Tynes reached the sulfurous excessive C of the Aida aria “O Patria Mia” with ease.
A recording of Pergolesi’s “Stabat Mater” earned a good evaluation in 1972 in Gramophone journal, the place she was praised for her “creamy-voiced soprano,” although the publication mentioned she “sounds uneasy in the high notes” and “is not always exact in pitch.”
But her main recordings, although hardly extensively identified, have earned unstinted reward from connoisseurs. In an electronic mail, Peter Clark, the previous archivist on the Metropolitan Opera, known as them “impressive singing by any standard,” including, “Her expressivity and dramatic involvement is exciting to hear.”
In the Sixties and ’70s, Ms. Tynes sang for seven seasons with the State Opera in Vienna, for eight seasons with opera firms in Prague and Budapest, and in Barcelona for one more 4, based on Mr. Roberts and the singer Kevin Thompson, a buddy of Ms. Tynes’s. “Once she was invited to perform in Europe, her skill and recognition grew,” Mr. Roberts mentioned.
She was seen in “Norma,” “Tosca” and “Carmen” and performed Lady Macbeth in Verdi, in addition to Leonora in “La Forza del Destino,” amongst different roles. In Hungary and Czechoslovakia, she was at all times “greeted quite warmly,” Mr. Roberts recalled. The Budapest weekly Film Szinhaz Muzsika (Film Theater Music) mentioned of her Aida performances, “She is a rare, singular phenomenon on the operatic stage.”
The reception was completely different within the United States. Of her efficiency on the Met, the New York Times critic Donal Henahan wrote: “It would be pleasant to be able to report that Miss Tynes, an American soprano who has had considerable success in European houses, swept all before her. Unfortunately, she seemed seriously miscast, and only intermittently could one detect real quality in the voice or much evidence of dramatic grasp.”
Ms. Tynes was unfazed by her foreshortened U.S. profession, Mr. Roberts mentioned, as a result of “the path to performance in Europe was so well paved.” In her period, Mr. Thompson mentioned, “you had to go to Europe,” including that “racism is real.” She continued to carry out into her 70s.
Margaret Elinor Tynes was born on Sept. 11, 1919, in Saluda, a small city in east Virginia, certainly one of 10 youngsters of Joseph Walter Tynes, a pastor at Providence Baptist Church in Greensboro, N.C., and Lucy (Rich) Tynes, a schoolteacher. Ms. Tynes grew up in Greensboro, sang within the church choir and had received a singing competitors by the age of 6.
She attended Dudley High School in Greensboro and earned a bachelor’s diploma from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in 1939 and a grasp’s diploma in music schooling from Columbia University in 1944. Her first break got here in 1946 when she sang Bess for a U.S.O. (United Service Organizations) manufacturing of “Porgy and Bess.”
In 1961, she married Hans von Klier, a German aristocrat and industrial designer. They lived in Milan and on Lake Garda till his dying in 2000, when she moved again to the United States.
She is survived by nieces and nephews, together with Mr. Roberts, a retired federal decide.
Whether her U.S. profession was stymied for racial causes, “I never heard Aunt Margaret complain she had doors slammed in her face,” Mr. Roberts mentioned. “I remember her saying she went from opportunity to opportunity.”
Source: www.nytimes.com