Frank Guarrera - Singing at The Met

Singing At The Met

Guarrera made his Met debut on December 14, 1948 as Escamillo in Bizet's Carmen with Risë Stevens in the title role, Ramon Vinay as Don José, Licia Albanese as Micaela, and Wilfred Pelletier conducting. That role became one of his signature roles at the Met; singing the role a total of 83 times for the company over the next twenty three years, including the premiere of Tyrone Guthrie's critically acclaimed 1952 staging of the opera. His other signature Met roles included Count Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro, Falke in Die Fledermaus, Figaro in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Ford in Falstaff (which he recorded with Toscanini in 1950), Marcello in La Bohème, and Valentin in Faust.

Guarrera sang at the Met for 28 consecutive seasons and was featured in numerous successful new stagings made during the tenure of General Director Rudolf Bing. Some of his more notable portrayals were Guglielmo in the first performances of Alfred Lunt's staging of Mozart's Così Fan Tutte (1951); Malatesta in Dino Yannopoulos's staging of Gaetano Donizetti's Don Pasquale (1955) with conductor Thomas Schippers in his Met debut; Belcore in Nathaniel Merrill's new staging of Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore (1960); Ping in Yoshio Aoyama's staging of Turandot (1961); Lescaut in Günther Rennert staging of Jules Massenet's Manon with Anna Moffo in the title role; and Alfio in Franco Zeffirelli's critically acclaimed 1970 staging of Cavalleria rusticana with conductor Leonard Bernstein.

In 1960 Guarrera had a significant personal triumph at the Met when he stepped into the title role of Verdi's Simon Boccanegra after the death of Leonard Warren. He said of the experience, "I was the cover, and I was it. I had barely learned the part. I got the phone call at my house from Rudolf Bing. The costumes were a little big for me, but I said not to worry. Fold everything up in the back and put in pins. I used one of my capes from Ernani to cover everything. That was a night to remember." Some of Guarrera's other Met roles included: Amonasro in Aida, Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor, Germont in La traviata, Malatesta in Don Pasquale, and the title role in Rigoletto. His last performance in a staged opera at the Met was in the title role of Gianni Schicchi in a new staging by Fabrizio Melano on May 8, 1976. He returned to the Met thirty years later on January 14, 2006 for a concert celebrating Mozart singing the duet "Il core vi dono" from Così fan tutte with Blanche Thebom.