Early Life and Classical Singing Career
Presnell was born as George Harvey Presnell in Modesto, California in 1933. He made his professional stage debut performing in an opera at the young age of sixteen. He attended the University of Southern California, earning a bachelors degree in vocal performance. He then pursued further vocal studies in Europe and at the Music Academy of the West. He appeared with a number of opera companies and orchestras during the 1950s. In 1957 he made his debut with the San Francisco Opera as the Officer in Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos. He went on to sing several more comprimario roles with the company that year, including the Jailer in the United States premiere of Francis Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites. During the late 1950s he made several appearances and recordings with both the Roger Wagner Chorale and the Philadelphia Orchestra, the latter under the baton of Eugene Ormandy.
Read more about this topic: Harve Presnell
Famous quotes containing the words early, life, classical, singing and/or career:
“But she is early up and out,
To trim the year or strip its bones;”
—Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950)
“A native health and innocence
Within my bones did grow,
And while my God did all his glories show,
I felt a vigour in my sense
That was all spirit: I within did flow
With seas of life like wine;
I nothing in the world did know
But ‘twas divine.”
—Thomas Traherne (1636–1674)
“Et in Arcadia ego.
[I too am in Arcadia.]”
—Anonymous, Anonymous.
Tomb inscription, appearing in classical paintings by Guercino and Poussin, among others. The words probably mean that even the most ideal earthly lives are mortal. Arcadia, a mountainous region in the central Peloponnese, Greece, was the rustic abode of Pan, depicted in literature and art as a land of innocence and ease, and was the title of Sir Philip Sidney’s pastoral romance (1590)
“My mother had a maid called Barbary;
She was in love, and he she loved proved mad,
And did forsake her. She had a song of “Willow,”
An old thing ‘twas, but it expressed her fortune,
And she died singing it. That song tonight
Will not go from my mind.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“From a hasty glance through the various tests I figure it out that I would be classified in Group B, indicating “Low Average Ability,” reserved usually for those just learning to speak the English Language and preparing for a career of holding a spike while another man hits it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)