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IGOR KIPNIS’s most recent recordings include the complete Bach Harpsichord Partitas on two Angel/Seraphim CDs (Nos. 1, 2 & 4 on 73700, Nos. 3, 5, & 6 on 74007) and with his duo-piano partner, Karen Kushner, "Four Hands," music for one piano, four hands, by Brahms, Schubert. Ravel, Gershwin, and others (Parnassus PACD 96030). His recordings of the complete Bach Fantasias on harpsichord and clavichord has also been reissued on Arabesque Z-6577
Visit his homepage at http://people.mags.net/kipnis

Readers should not forget that his father, Alexander Kipnis, was a singer – he is, incidentally, involved with coauthor, Barry Lenson, in writing the singer's biography for Amadeus Press) Below you can read a short but accurate biograpy of Alexander Kipnis.

Marston Records’ complete Parsifal Alexander Kipnis, Rene Maison, Martial Singher, and Majorie Lawrence, all conducted in 1936 at the Teatro Colon. The 3-CD set will be out in July/August.

ALEXANDER KIPNIS
My father, Alexander Kipnis, was born in the city of Zhitomir, Ukraine, on February 13, 1891 (February 1, Julian calendar). The family of seven, housed in a Jewish ghetto, was impoverished. His schooling was rudimentary, and when he was 12 his father died, his contribution to the family income coming from working as a carpenter’s apprentice and, until his voice changed, singing soprano in local synagogues, as well as, later, in Bessarabia (now Moldavia). Back in Zhitomir, the teenager also took part in a Yiddish theatrical troop, eventually leaving for employment at a synagogue in Siedice, Poland.Shortly after, he entered the Warsaw Conservatory at 19, an institution that did not require the equivalent of a high-school diploma. There, his required curriculum included the study of two instruments, double bass and trombone, while he continued to sing in synagogues, all the while hoping to avoid conscription into the Russian Army. In 1912, on the recommendation of a choirmaster, he traveled to Berlin, where he began studying voice with Ernst Grenzebach , a teacher, also, of Lauritz Melchior, Max Lorenz, and Meta Seinemeyer, while at the same time singing as a member of the choir of second basses in Monti’s Operetta Theater.

At the start of the first World War, due to his Russian passport, my father was interned as an alien in a holding camp, where, singing to himself, he was overheard by one of the internment camp’s officers, a captain whose brother was the general manager of the Wiesbaden Opera. Based upon his recommendation, he was released and hired by the Hamburg Opera, where for two years he was to gain experience before being signed by Wiesbaden. It was in Hamburg in 1915 that he made his stage debut, singing three Strauss songs as a "guest" in the second act party scene of Die Fledermaus. In 1917 he moved to Wiesbaden, where, between that year and 1922, he was heard in well over 300 performances. In one year alone, 1920 (when he sang some 90 times), these ranged from such relative bit parts, as Colline (La Boheme), Abimelech (Samson et Delilah), Zuniga (Carmen), Bonze (Butterfly), Ferrando (Trovatore), Notary (Rosenkavalier), Schlemiel (Tales of Hoffman), and Monterone (Rigoletto) to such major roles as Sarastro, Rocco, Ramfis, Hunding, Pogner, and King Mark. It was in Wiesbaden, also, that he sang his first Gournemanz, a role that he was to perform as well in Bayreuth, Berlin, Munich, Chicago, London, Paris, Vienna, Lyons, Prague, Amsterdam, New York (the role in which he made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 1940), and Buenos Aires, the site of the present broadcast recording.

In 1922 Alexander Kipnis joined the Deutsches Operhaus in Berlin (the Charlottenburg Opera, which became the Städtische Oper in 1925). His first tour of the United States was with the Wagner Opera Festival in 1923, following which for nine season he was on the roster of the Chicago Civic Opera (1923-1932); in 1927 at the Bayreuth Festival he sang in Parsifal under Karl Muck (where he recorded the Good Friday Music under Siegfried Wagner for Columbia Records), as well as in 1933 in performances under Richard Strauss. A member of the Berlin State Opera starting in 1930 (by 1935 he was able to extricate himself from his contract), he subsequently appeared as a guest performer for three seasons at the Vienna State Opera (1936-38), toured Australia, and then, just after the Anschluss, settled permanently in the United States in 1938. Among his last appearances in Europe that year were opera and orchestral concerts in Switzerland, Belgium, France, Italy, Rumania, Yugoslavia, Holland, plus recitals for the Jewish Kulturbund in Germany just prior to the infamous Kristallnacht.

By the time of his Metropolitan Opera debut in 1940, he had sung at virtually every major opera house and festival, including, in addition to those already mentioned, Covent Garden, Glyndebourne, Salzburg, the Paris Opéra, the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires (where he appeared in 1926, 1928, 1931, 1934-36, 1941), San Francisco, and, of course, the Metropolitan (where he sang 107 times between 1940-46).

Altogether, I have tabulated his roles between 1915-1951 as amounting to 108, some in more than one language, his performances in opera and oratorio tallying more than 1600; nor should it be forgotten that he was also highly regarded as a lieder singer (viz., his many Wolf, Brahms, and Schubert recordings). Finally, it is of interest to note that among the major conductors with whom he sang during his long career were Ansermet, Barbirolli, Beecham, Blech, Busch, Coates, Elmendorff, Furtwängler, Heger, Karajan, Krips, Kleiber, Klemperer, Knapperstbusch, Koussevitzky, Leinsdorf, Mengelberg, Mitropoulos, Monteux, Muck, Nikisch, Ormandy, Pfitzner, Reiner, Rodzinski, Rosbaud, Scherchen, Strauss, Szell, Toscanini, Walter, and Weingartner.

Though my family lived in New York City during my father’s first few years at the Metropolitan, in 1942 he purchased a house in Westport, Connecticut, the first home he had ever owned. From there he would commute to New York or wherever his engagements took him, including a great many recitals and orchestral appearances in the United States during the years of the Second World War. Following his retirement from the Metropolitan in 1946 (his last concert appearances were in 1951), he began teaching, first at the New York College of Music and then in 1966 at The Juilliard School. After complications resulting from a stroke, he died in Westport on May 14, 1978, at the age of 87.

Igor Kipnis

La Traviata Reviewed
In the operatic area (yes, I do listen to opera), there are two newly issued Traviatas. The 2000 soundtrack of "Traviata á Paris," conducted by Zubin Mehta with the RAI Symphony Orchestraand Eteri Gvazava as a buxom-sounding Violetta, José Cura as a stentorian Alfredo, and Rolando Panerai as a rather blustery Germont, is a sound treat (two CDs, Teldec 8573-82741-2). Without for a moment forgetting the earlier Franco Zeffirelli production with Teresa Stratas as the most affecting Violetta imaginable, one looks forward to seeing to what promises to be director Giuseppe Patroni Griffi’s colorful film The singing is nowhere less than good, and the conducting, though brilliant, is not especially subtle nor even moving (I find it hard to forget the1946 broadcast version by Toscanini on RCA Victor). Ah, but that Teldec sound!
Quite another sound picture comes from the Milan studio-made 1930 recording, the first electrically made set of the completeTraviata by Carlo Sabajno and the La Scala forces(two CDs, Opera d’Oro OPD-9002), with Anna Rozsa as Violetta, Alessandro Ziliani as Alfredo, and Luigi Borgonovi as Germont. This historical recording, previously issued on VAI 1108, has dry and limited sound and minimal atmospheric. If none of the La Scala house singers consistently compare with those on the top-level vocal parthenon, the performance does have an idiomatic flavor that is hard to resist. The vocal collector will find much of stylistic interest here, even though another historical La Scala recording from 1928 under Lorenzo Molajoli vies for equal attention.
The late Leonard Warren (1911-1960), the much admired Metropolitan Opera baritone of the 1940s-1950s has greatly benefited from an important and belated reissue on two beautifully documented CDs issued in conjunction with a comprehensive and extravagantly illustrated biography of the singer by Mary Jane Phillips-Matz. The discs are even divided between opera arias and concert songs, and the carefully remastered recordings date from between 1941-1958. Both, as well as the book, may be obtained from theLeonard Warren Foundation, 100 Sugar Creek Road, Alama, CA 94507; fax: 925-855-1555 or from the distributor, VAI (800-477-7146.
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