Biography
Born in Dodge City, Kansas, King studied music at Louisiana State University and earned a master's degree in 1952 from Kansas City University. He started singing as a baritone, but noticed in 1955 that his range was more that of a tenor. He retrained himself as a tenor and won the American Opera Auditions in Cincinnati in 1961.
He made his debut as Don José in Bizet's Carmen with the San Francisco Opera. He sang the French and Italian repertoire with the Deutsche Oper Berlin from 1962 to 1965 and first appeared at the Metropolitan Opera in 1966.
King went on to sing at all the major opera houses in Europe and America. He was a particular favorite at the Vienna State Opera, where he last appeared as Florestan in Beethoven's Fidelio in 1997.
He recorded extensively. One of his famous recordings is not of opera but of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde, made in 1967 with Leonard Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic; his baritone partner is Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Interestingly, King and Fischer-Dieskau were born within six days of each other: Fischer-Dieskau on May 28, 1925. King also recorded Das Lied with Janet Baker under Bernard Haitink.
The tenor's other recordings include: Wagner's Die Walküre (with Birgit Nilsson and Hans Hotter, conducted by Sir Georg Solti, 1965); Puccini's Tosca (excerpts in German, opposite Anja Silja, conducted by Lorin Maazel, 1966); Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos (1968); Fidelio (1969); Wagner's Lohengrin (1971); Puccini's Madama Butterfly (with Maria Chiara, 1972); Saint-Saëns' Samson and Delilah (1973); Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten (1977); Hindemith's Mathis der Maler (with Fischer-Dieskau and William Cochran, 1979); Franz Schmidt's Notre Dame (1988); and, from the Bayreuth Festival, Die Walküre (with Nilsson and Theo Adam, 1967) and Parsifal (with Dame Gwyneth Jones, led by Pierre Boulez, 1970).
King taught at Indiana University from 1984 to 2003.
He was married three times and had five children. At the time of his death in 2005, which was due to a heart attack, he was married to the former Elizabeth Lively.
Read more about this topic: James King (tenor)
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