Samuel Ramey occupies a special place among American opera singers. While he’s appeared in several posts on this site, I have not yet devoted an entire article to his exceptional career. At a time when international operatic stardom was still largely associated with tenors and sopranos, he became one of the rare basses whose name alone could attract an audience.
He was born on March 28, 1942, in Colby, a small town in northwestern Kansas. He sang during his school years but did not initially seem destined for a major operatic career. While attending Kansas State University, his interest in opera was stimulated by participation in a summer program at Central City Opera in Colorado. He subsequently transferred to Wichita State University, where he studied with Arthur Newman and received his music degree in 1968. Further experience came through the Grass Roots Opera Company in North Carolina and the apprentice programs at Central City and the Santa Fe Opera. After moving to New York, he continued his vocal studies with Armen Boyajian.
Ramey made his New York City Opera debut on March 11, 1973, as Zuniga in Bizet’s Carmen. He quickly advanced from supporting assignments to leading roles. Following the early death of Norman Treigle in 1975, Ramey assumed several parts closely associated with his celebrated predecessor, particularly the title role in Boito’s Mefistofele.
His European career developed rapidly. He first appeared at Glyndebourne in 1976 as Figaro in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. A breakthrough came at the 1980 Aix-en-Provence Festival, where he sang Assur in Rossini’s Semiramide opposite Montserrat Caballé and Marilyn Horne. The role revealed what made him unique: he possessed the authority expected of a great bass, yet could also dispatch Rossini’s elaborate runs, leaps and ornaments with the accuracy of a coloratura singer. La Scala engaged him as Figaro in 1981, and Covent Garden followed with the same role in 1982. By the early 1980s, Ramey was appearing regularly in Milan, London, Paris, Vienna and the leading German houses, as well as at the festivals of Salzburg, Pesaro and Aix-en-Provence.
His Metropolitan Opera debut came on January 19, 1984, as Argante in the company premiere of Handel’s Rinaldo. The part’s fiercely difficult entrance aria, “Sibilar gli angui d’Aletto,” immediately displayed both the size of his voice and its remarkable flexibility. Ramey became a mainstay of the Met for more than two decades, appearing there as Don Giovanni, Figaro, Assur, Mustafà in L’italiana in Algeri, the four villains in Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Bluebeard, Boris Godunov, Zaccaria in Nabucco, Pagano in I Lombardi, Méphistophélès and Mefistofele, among many other characters.
Why did it take so long for the Met to engage him? The delay appears to have resulted chiefly from Metropolitan Opera politics and repertory policy – not from any uncertainty about Ramey’s ability. This delay is characteristic of the many inconsistent decisions the Met often makes.
The immediate circumstances of his engagement reveal the Met’s reluctance. Marilyn Horne had selected Ramey to sing Argante with her in a 1982 Ottawa production of Rinaldo. When that production was transferred to the Met for its centennial season and the first Handel opera ever performed by the company, the Met reportedly wanted to replace him with one of its own regular basses – even though Ramey had already sung successfully at Glyndebourne, La Scala, and Covent Garden. Ramey recalled: “I can understand that the Met felt forced into taking me.”
Horne’s support and the transfer of the existing production finally got him onto the Met stage. His entrance aria stopped the performance, and critics immediately remarked on how extraordinary it was that the country’s leading opera house had waited so long to employ him.
Thus, the 11 year interval between his City Opera debut and his Met debut was largely a product of institutional rivalry, conservative casting practices and the Met’s neglect of the repertory in which he first became indispensable. Once admitted, he quickly became one of the company’s major artists, eventually singing more than 300 performances there.
Ramey’s most important musical achievement was his restoration of virtuosity to the bass repertory. During much of the twentieth century, many bass parts in Rossini and other bel canto operas had been treated principally as comic character roles, their florid passages approximated or simplified. Ramey sang the notes as written. His Assur, Mustafà, Selim, Don Basilio and Maometto II combined rapid coloratura with commanding tone and an instinctive sense of comedy that never descended into buffoonery. Alongside Marilyn Horne and other leaders of the bel canto revival, he helped demonstrate that Rossini’s bass writing demanded the same technical finish expected of the composer’s great soprano and mezzo-soprano roles.
Yet it was as opera’s supreme diabolical specialist that Ramey became most famous. He sang the devils of Gounod’s Faust, Boito’s Mefistofele and Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust, as well as Nick Shadow and Offenbach’s four villains. His Méphistophélès in Faust became his most frequently performed role. At the same time, the spectacular Robert Carsen production of Mefistofele was created around his combination of vocal command, athletic movement and sardonic theatricality. In 1996 he assembled these characters in the concert program A Date with the Devil, first presented to a sold-out Avery Fisher Hall audience and later performed internationally. Ramey’s devils could be terrifying, seductive, witty, or strangely sympathetic; he understood that evil on the stage is most compelling when it possesses charm.
Verdi’s Attila did not receive a lot of attention until Ramey decided to make it a pillar of his repertory. He performed the title role all over the world. In Act 1, Scene 2, Attila awakes and tells Uldino of a dream in which an old man stopped him at the gates of Rome and warned him to turn back (“Mentre gonfiarsi l’anima parea” / “As my soul seemed to swell”). In the daylight, his courage returns and he orders a march (“Oltre a quel limite, t’attendo, o spettro”/ “Beyond that boundary I await you, O ghost!”).
However, when a procession of maidens clad in white approaches, singing the Veni Creator Spiritus prayer (“Vieni, le menti visita “/ “Come, visit our minds”), he recognizes the Roman bishop Leo as the old man of his dream and collapses in terror. Ramey’s great voice makes the opera sound better than it is.
The Toreador Song from Carmen is known to just about everyone. The term is archaic; a bullfighter is called a matador or lidiador. Its range is tricky, a little low for some baritones and a bit high for many basses. Ramey sang the role early in his career. He gives a splendid reading of the piece.
Ramey’s performance of Don Basilio’s aria below is from his New York City Opera days. Where the costume came from is impossible to say
“Sorgete, sorgete” (more fully, “Sorgete: in sì bel giorno”) is a famous grand bass-baritone cavatina from Act I of Gioachino Rossini’s opera Maometto II, premiered in Naples in 1820. In this stirring entrance aria, the Ottoman leader Maometto (Mehmed II) rouses his Muslim warriors outside the besieged Venetian colony of Negroponte. Ramey’s great coloratura technique is on full display and also shows why the opera is performed infrequently, as there are very few basses who have the technical prowess to fully realize this display piece.
Next two scenes from Mozart’s Don Giovanni.
Rossini’s Semiramide is a splendid opera if you have a once-in-a-century mezzo-soprano and bass. When the Met did the opera with Marilyn Horne and Ramey in the key roles, the performance worked like a fine Swiss clock. When the company brought back the opera without the two vocal titans, it was a yawner. Ramey’s technique and all-around greatness are obvious in the scene below.
Robert le Diable first performed in 1831 and is one of the first grand operas at the Paris Opera. It was popular throughout the 19th century and then gradually disappeared from the stage. More recently, it has reappeared, but it is unlikely to regain the popularity it once had. Bertram (who is actually the devil and Robert’s father) invokes spirits and demons during the famous “Infernal Waltz” scene in Act III.
Three scenes from Boito’s Mefistofele follow. Ramey had great success in the title role.
Ramey and Dmitri Hvorostovsky performed the famous duet that ends Act 2 of Bellini’s final opera, I Puritani. It’s a concert performance.
Finally, a concert performance of Jerome Kern’s “Old Man River.” Ramey is in stupendous voice.
Ramey’s long career was not without a conspicuous late decline. As he moved into his sixties, the exceptionally steady voice of his prime developed a broad, increasingly pronounced wobble. Sustained notes sometimes oscillated so widely that the center of the pitch became indistinct, and the problem diminished both the clarity of his line and the authority of his singing. The change was especially striking because firmness, flexibility, and technical control had been among his greatest strengths. Ramey continued to compensate through musicianship, diction and stagecraft, but his final performances could give only an imperfect impression of the extraordinary instrument he had possessed for several decades.
In the later phase of his career, Ramey increasingly devoted himself to teaching and directing. He returned to Wichita State as a distinguished visiting artist in 2012 and subsequently became Distinguished Professor of Opera, coaching young singers and participating in university productions. The appointment completed an unusually satisfying circle: one of the most internationally successful singers produced by the American Midwest returned to the institution where his voice had first been seriously cultivated.
