Lawrence Tibbet (the extra “t” was added at the Met due to a typo;
Tibbett liked it and kept it) was born in Bakersfield, California. He was seven
years old when his father, the local sheriff, was shot to death while attempting to
arrest a bandit. Tibbett’s mother moved the family to Los Angeles, where
Tibbett grew up. His love of the stage began to develop during high school,
where he doggedly sought roles in school productions—with limited success.
He continued to pursue singing and acting gigs after graduation, and in one of
these jobs, he met the star of the show, Basil Ruysdael, a Metropolitan basso.
Ruysdael became Tibbett’s teacher and exiled the “high-class”
diction Tibbett had been using: “Sing it as you would tell me about it if
we were sitting together at lunch—just speak the words on the tune.”
Ruysdael’s advice surely helped [Tibbett] focus his voice on precisely those qualities that he was to put to use so effectively and would be seized upon so gratefully by audiences of all kinds throughout the 1930s. Tibbett was positively driven by a need to communicate, with words as much as with his ravishing vocal sound, and few other Americans with classically trained voices reached a wider public, took such pleasure in singing, or offered their talents more generously.World War I broke out, and Tibbett joined the Navy, serving aboard the SS Iris as a shipboard instructor. After serving in the war and its aftermath, he returned home to marry and start a family. Still involved in local theater and music organizations, he eventually met Rupert Hughes, poet and erstwhile composer, who was impressed with Tibbett’s abilities and encouraged him to try for a career in New York. Tibbett borrowed stake money from a member of a local men’s choral group and went to New York, where he became a student of Frank LaForge. He sang in churches, played roles in theater productions, and eventually landed a spot in Frances Alda’s touring group, the Metropolitan Opera Quartet. Alda, Gatti-Casazza’s wife at the time, was instrumental in getting Tibbett a job at the Met (début 1923), where he sang small roles until 1924, when he was asked if he could fill the role of Ford in Falstaff because Vincente Ballester, the baritone assigned to the role, was ill and would not be available. Alda coached Tibbett in the role while on tour, and they returned to New York to begin rehearsals. Alda reported in her memoirs that the seasoned Met cast members were murmuring in the wings, critical of Tibbett’s efforts at singing and acting. But by the time of the performance, Tibbett was ready. And for him it was an historic occasion. As recounted by Peter G. Davis,—Peter G. Davis
Verdi’s Falstaff was revived that night as a tribute to Antonio Scotti, the veteran Italian baritone who had sung the title role at the last Met performance in 1910, and the starry cast also included Lucrezia Bori, Frances Alda, Beniamino Gigli and Adamo Didur. . . .Even Met watchers who believed that Tibbett might one day move up to better things were astonished at what happened that evening as Act II, Scene I, of Falstaff came to an end. Enraged by his wife’s supposed indiscretion with the fat knight, the jealous Ford sings an aria that climaxes on the phrase “Laudata sempre sia, nel fondo del mio cor la gelosia,” an octave-and-a-half ascent to a high G natural and a dramatic-musical effect calculated to bring down the house—old Verdi’s last gift to a baritone with a healthy, ringing upper register and an ability to seize the moment. And Tibbett did just that. . . .
One eyewitness, the music critic and tireless chronicler of American singers Oscar Thompson, left a vivid description of the scene: “On the stage, behind his boscage of beard, young Tibbett took fire. The baritone sang like one possessed. He hammered the table against which he leaned, he flung a cup at it, he strode this way and that with an indifference to conductor and prompter that many veterans never acquire. Violent as it was, his acting rang true, And his voice, white-hot in the passion of his singing, startled and fascinated the audience the more because it scarcely knew the singer who stood before it.”
When the curtain fell, the audience went wild—a sixteen-minute ovation.
The critics were ecstatic. What had been set up as a tribute to Scotti became
the triumph for Tibbett.
He eventually succeeded Scotti in the leading Italian roles and remained a
principal with the Metropolitan for 27 seasons, noted, in his prime, for his
legato and vivid acting. An avid supporter of American-composed operas and of
singing in English, he sang in the premiers of Deems Taylor’s
The King’s Henchman
(1927) and
Peter Ibbetson
(1931), Louis Gruenberg’s
The Emperor Jones
(1933), Howard Hanson’s
Merry Mount
(1934), John Seymour’s
In the Pasha’s Garden
(1935) and Richard Hageman’s
Caponsacchi
(1937). He also took part in the first Metropolitan performances of
Jonny spielt auf, Peter Grimes, Simon Boccanegra
and
Kovanshchina
(in which he made his last Metropolitan appearance in 1950, as Ivan). He also
sang in San Francisco, Chicago, Paris, Vienna and Prague, and at Covent Garden
created the title role in Goossens’s
Don Juan de Mañara
(1937). His nothing-held-back performance style began to take its toll (his
vocal powers began to decline as early as 1940), and he left the opera stage in
1950. That same year he appeared on Broadway in
The Barrier.
He continued to act in theater and film as well as musicals. His last stage
role was in
Fanny
(1956). He died during surgery following an automobile accident in 1960.
In addition to being an outstanding artist, Tibbett was instrumental in musicians union work, helping form the American Guild of Musical Artists in 1936 and serving as president until 1953, He also helped organize the American Federation of Radio Artists and served in an executive capacity there until 1945.