In all the continual craziness of current politics, it is quite understandable, especially if you don’t follow opera or classical music, that you might have missed the sad news of the death of one of the most admired and loved Russian baritones, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, at age 55 this past Wednesday, on St. Cecilia’s Day, to add to the meta-irony. Hvorostovsky died in the middle of the night, London time, as his family noted in their official statement on his death:
“It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Dmitri Hvorostovsky — beloved operatic baritone, husband, father, son, and friend — at age 55. After a two and a half year battle with brain cancer, he died peacefully at 3:20am GMT on Wednesday, November 22 surrounded by his family at a hospice facility near their home in London, UK. He is survived by his wife, Florence Hvorostovsky, and their two children, Maxim (14) and Nina (10); his twin children, Alexandra and Daniel (21), from a previous marriage; and his parents, Alexander and Lyudmila. Having retired from the opera stage at the end of 2016 due to complications from the tumor, Hvorostovsky made his final public appearance in a “Dmitri and Friends” concert at Austria's Grafenegg Festival in June; in September, he was awarded the Order of Merit for the Fatherland of the IV degree, one of the highest non-military honors in his native Russia, for his great contribution to Russian art and culture.“
Many newspaper and magazine tributes and obituaries are on-line, and just a sampling includes:
* NYT, Anthony Tommasini
* Opera News, Jennifer Melick
There’s an even greater sadness in DH’s passing when you see in the family press release that his survivors include his parents, added by the fact that, as Tommasini noted, DH was an only child.
DH’s father did recognize his son’s talent early on, again per Tommasini:
“That he showed musical talent, at first on the piano, delighted his father, who had wanted to be a musician but had been forced into engineering school by his own father, a Communist die-hard. He arranged for his son to attend music school in the afternoons and evenings.”
However, DH got involved with a rough crowd as a teenager:
“When that program ended, however, Dmitri, at 14, fell in with street gangs, started drinking vodka, got into brawls and broke his nose several times.”
The drinking problem, unfortunately, got worse for him as the years went by. DH himself acknowledged to The New Yorker, as quoted in Tommasini’s article:
“I could easily put away two bottles of vodka after a performance. I was a noisy, troublesome drunk.”
Besides potentially his health (one wonders if maybe it had some effect on what would become his brain cancer), DH paid for his alcoholism in his personal life, again per Tommasini’s article:
“Alcohol…contributed to the breakup in 2001 of his first marriage, to Svetlana Hvorostovsky, whom he had married in 1989.”
However, DH did turn the corner on his drinking problem, and found something of an alternative, again per The New Yorker via Tommasini:
‘“Mr. Hvorostovsky said he stopped drinking on New Year’s Day 2001. He started unwinding after performances…by taking long, hot baths and watching “stupid television.”’
Speaking of television, Ellick noted about DH and TV, in her rather fulsome tribute:
“…his telegenic face was a boon for TV and HD opera, especialy given his ability to scale down opera-house expressions to the dimensions of the small screen.”
DH appeared in several of the Metropolitan Opera HD-cast productions. The last of these was the October 2015 HD-cast of Giuseppe Verdi’s Il Trovatore, as the Count di Luna. Just a few months before that scheduled HD-cast, the brain cancer had really taken hold, but DH did rally to give 3 performances of the originally scheduled 6 at the Met that fall. Per Ellick:
“In June 2015, it was announced that Hvorostovsky was being treated in London for brain cancer. The mood was highly charged when he returned to the Met the following September, after several months of cancellations, to sing Count di Luna in Il Trovatore. Opera-lovers were deliriously happy to have him back onstage, and they showed it with thunderous applause at his first entrance and again after his aria “Il balen,” in which he sounded remarkably unchanged. His presence notched things up, spurring [Anna] Netrebko’s Leonora and Dolora Zajick’s Azucena to a feverish intensity. At curtain call, he was showered with white roses as Netrebko, a close friend, stood beside him in tears.”
Self diaried the subsequent Metropolitan Opera HD-cast here, where you can see the YT video of that first night where the orchestra had rained those white roses on DH. But it never hurts to re-post it:
Hvorostovsky had jumped to fame in the West in 1989, when he won the Cardiff Singer of the World competition that year. In the same competition, Bryn Terfel (now Sir Bryn) took the Lieder Prize, de facto second place. Given how catty and/or beeyotch-y chatter about opera can be, some partisans on Terfel’s side kind of went off about that. However, in a May 2002 article in BBC Music Magazine by John Allison, Terfel was chill about it (at least publicly):
“I thought that the prizes went perfectly. Dmitri was more ready to take on the stresses and strains that came with the prize, because vocally he was already so secure.”
Given DH’s subsequent alcohol issues, one wonders, in retrospect. In fairness, DH must have had a pretty hefty dose of self-awareness, as he quit the bottle to start 2001. In this same article, Allison quotes DH:
“At first I just wanted to be the best, and expected people to love and cherish me. I was young and stupid.”
It turned out, though, that DH got that wish, in that he had a huge legion of fans pretty much all through his career, who did love and cherish him. Professionally, as he admitted himself, he could be a pill with fellow singers, especially during those hard-drinking times of the 1990s. But he obviously got over that, given the tributes from many on Twitter, including fellow singers. Among the salutes is this Tweet from Sir Bryn Terfel:
“RIP. To the king of the 1989 Cardiff singer of the world. He certainly inspired us all to pull our socks up. Confident, crazy, talented, caring man. My thoughts and prayers are with his family.”
You can see that love also with Anna Netrebko jumping up and down at the Met during the Trovatore curtain call, to encourage the audience. A later Met audience got to show their love one for him last time, at a May 2017 gala benefit concert commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center, where DH made a surprise appearance to sing an aria from Verdi’s Rigoletto, in what would prove to be his last appearance ever on the Met stage:
Even with just the opening applause, you can feel the emotion from the audience to the stage. One final irony is that last December, DH made a studio recording of Rigoletto for the Delos label, his first commercial complete recording in the title role. The recording release date was just this month.
The one time that I saw DH live was sometime in the last millennium, in recital in Chicago. It was too long ago to have accurate memories, where all I remember was that it was a good concert, with at least one encore. Obviously now, with hindsight, it would have been great to see him live more than once.
What all of us have left now are memories, and his recordings, both audio and video. It remains to send condolences to his family, and to say to DH, in spirit: thank you for the music.
With that, you can discuss any thoughts about DH, or observe the standard SNLC protocol…