Lawrence Tibbett

Lawrence Mervil Tibbett, born on November 16, 1896, in Bakersfield, California, was an American baritone, opera singer, film actor, radio personality, and recording artist whose Broadway career spanned from 1923 to 1954. His voice was characterized by a large, dark timbre approaching that of a bass, with a dynamic range in his prime extending from powerful fortes to delicate pianissimos.

Tibbett was born Lawrence Mervil Tibbet, with a single final "t." His father, a part-time deputy sheriff, was killed in a shootout with outlaw Jim McKinney in 1903. Tibbett grew up in Los Angeles, where he earned money singing in church choirs and at funerals, and graduated from Manual Arts High School in 1915. During World War I he served in the Merchant Marine, after which he found work singing as prologue to silent films at the Grauman "Million Dollar" Theater in downtown Los Angeles. He later studied voice in New York City with Frank La Forge.

In 1923, at age 26, Tibbett signed his first contract with the Metropolitan Opera at $60 per week. The Met mistakenly added a second "t" to his surname on the contract, and he chose to retain the new spelling. Over the following decades he sang leading roles with the company more than 600 times, performing there through 1950. His Met repertoire included Valentin in Gounod's Faust, Silvio and later Tonio in Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, the King's Herald in Wagner's Lohengrin, and Ford in Verdi's Falstaff, the last of which brought him his first national recognition. He was also celebrated for the title role in Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, Iago in Otello, Scarpia in Puccini's Tosca, and Escamillo in Bizet's Carmen. Tibbett additionally created leading roles in several American operas, among them Louis Gruenberg's The Emperor Jones, Howard Hanson's Merry Mount, and Deems Taylor's The King's Henchman and Peter Ibbetson. In January 1937, during a rehearsal at the Met for Richard Hageman's opera Caponsacchi, Tibbett accidentally stabbed chorus member Joseph Sterzini in the hand during a fight scene; Sterzini, who suffered from high blood pressure, died later that day.

In 1927, Tibbett traveled to California to sing the lead role in the Grove Play St. Francis of Assisi, and it was during that San Francisco trip that he met Jennie Marston Burgard, daughter of New York banker Edgar L. Marston, whom he married in 1932. He had previously met his first wife, Grace Mackay Smith, in 1916, when she rented a room in his mother's house. During the 1930s, Tibbett toured Europe and Australia, giving performances and recitals in London, Paris, Prague, Vienna, Sydney, and Melbourne.

Tibbett made his first recordings for the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1926 and recorded exclusively for Victor and its successor RCA Victor throughout his career. He performed the roles of Porgy and Jake on the first album of selections from George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, with Gershwin present at the recording sessions, and made a recording of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II's Ol' Man River from Show Boat. Marston Records released a 10-CD set of his recordings in March 2024.

In the early 1930s, Tibbett appeared in several films. His debut, The Rogue Song, a 1930 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer production shot in two-color Technicolor and featuring Laurel and Hardy, earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. He subsequently starred in the MGM musical New Moon opposite Grace Moore, The Cuban Love Song (1931) with Lupe Vélez, The Prodigal (1931) with Esther Ralston and Roland Young, Metropolitan for 20th Century-Fox in 1935, and Under Your Spell in 1936. During the same decade, Tibbett hosted a domestic radio program sponsored by the Packard Motor Car Company, on which he initially performed formal music before adding popular tunes to his repertoire at the company's request. He also appeared on Your Hit Parade.

In 1936, Tibbett co-founded the American Guild of Musical Artists with violinist Jascha Heifetz, a labor union for solo performing artists, and served as its president for 17 years. That same year he announced the Packard 120 on air and drove one of the vehicles.

After his operatic career concluded, Tibbett turned to musical theatre and stage work in the early 1950s. He spent a summer in stock playing the Reverend Davidson in Rain and appeared as Captain Hook in a touring production of Peter Pan staged by John Burrell, which starred Jean Arthur, featured Veronica Lake as Peter, and included a musical score by Leonard Bernstein. His Broadway credits include The Barrier, Miracle in the Mountains, King Lear, and Fanny, in the last of which he took over the role originated by bass Ezio Pinza during the show's original Broadway run. In later years he also hosted a radio program featuring historic operatic recordings, supplemented by his own reminiscences of his stage experiences.

Tibbett died on July 15, 1960, after striking his head on a table during a fall in his apartment. He is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. In the year of his death he was named a posthumous member of the charter class of honorees on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He was also pictured on a United States postage stamp in the Legends of American Music series celebrating opera singers. A comprehensive biography, Dear Rogue: A Biography of the American Baritone Lawrence Tibbett by Hertzel Weinstat and Bert Wechsler, was published in 1996 by Amadeus Press of Portland, Oregon.