Jean de Reszke - Retirement Activities, The 'lost' Recordings and Death

Retirement Activities, The 'lost' Recordings and Death

De Reszke married a countess in 1896. He reduced his performance load during the opening years of the 20th century. Prudently, in 1904, he decided to retire while his voice was still in good shape, citing illness as the reason for his departure. Enrico Caruso, 23 years de Reszke's junior, took up his mantle as the world's most famous tenor. (Unlike de Reszke, however, Caruso did not choose to become an exponent of Wagnerian opera.)

He subsequently busied himself breeding racehorses in Poland and teaching singing in Paris and at Nice on the French Riviera. His pupils came from a variety of countries and included Bidú Sayão, Louise Edvina, Claire Croiza, Arthur Endrèze, Vladimir Rosing, Mafalda Salvatini, Clive Carey, Maggie Teyte and Miriam Licette. The already well established Austrian tenor Leo Slezak also took lessons from de Reszke in 1908-1909, seeking advice on how to further improve his vocal technique.

De Reszke died at his villa in Nice in 1925, having contracted influenza. He was aged 75.

Noted for his rounded timbre and matchless ability to combine a virile singing style with an exceptional degree of gracefulness and vocal refinement, de Reszke is generally regarded as being one of the very greatest tenors of all time. It is therefore highly unfortunate that the release of his only two commercial gramophone records, cut in Paris in 1905 for the Fonotipia label, never took place as intended. The matrices and test pressings appear to have been destroyed when de Reszke expressed his disappointment with the results. (Rumours of the survival of one of these discs, current in the 1950s, are to be discounted). Only a few Mapleson Cylinders, primitive recordings made privately during actual performances at the New York Metropolitan Opera in 1901, exist to give us a faint souvenir of him at work. They have been released on CD by the Symposium label, together with transfers of similar cylinders bearing snatches of the voices of other Met artists of the era.