William Warfield
William Warfield was born in West Helena, Arkansas, United States on January 22nd, 1920 and is the Opera Singer. At the age of 82, William Warfield biography, profession, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, measurements, education, career, dating/affair, family, news updates, and networth are available.
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William Caesar Warfield (22 January 1920 – August 22, 2002) was an American concert bass-baritone singer and comedian.
Regina, Marc Blitzstein's Broadway opera, was one of his early professional appearances.
In 1950, he made his recital debut in Town Hall, New York.
Leontyne Price produced a highly acclaimed album of selections from Porgy and Bess in 1963.
Early life and career
Warfield was born in West Helena, Arkansas, and was the oldest of five sons of a Baptist minister. He grew up in Rochester, New York, where his father, Mt., was the pastor. Vernon Churchill. He received the Music Educators National Song Competition in St. Louis in 1938 and expressed an interest in studying for a career on the concert stage. Warfield, a senior at the Eastman School of Music, opened his graduation recital in November 1942 before an overflow audience at Kilbourn Hall, the Eastman Theater. He was dressed in military uniform at his graduation ceremony in May. After graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1942 and serving in the military, he returned to the Eastman School in 1946 to complete a master's degree.
Warfield was one of less than one hundred African American soldiers of the Ritchie Boys, thousands of soldiers who were trained at Fort Ritchie, Maryland, according to a recent exhibit about World War II. Hundreds of Jewish recruits who had left Nazi Germany for the United States were trained to interrogate their one-time countrymen, which was an intelligence center. Warfield was admitted to the camp by the Zekelman Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, Michigan, because of his exceptional German skills, which he developed while studying music, according to the exhibit. His abilities were never put to use due to segregation.
On his first entry into the Army, Warfield said he was initially expected to be a truck driver but after he protested, he was sent to Ft. Ritchie, where he was in charge of stage shows and spoke fluently with German, Italian, and French troops in their native language.
In 1946, he was dismissed from the Army, where he had served in military intelligence. He appeared in Call Me Mister's road show tour later this year. William Marshall, Carl Reiner, Buddy Hackett, and Bob Fosse appeared on Warfield, according to Warfield. He appeared on "Set My People Free" and the opera Regina, as well as studying with Yves Tinayre and Otto Herz of the American Theatre Wing's veteran's training program.
On March 19, 1950, he made his recital debut in Town Hall in New York. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation had him to tour Australia and give 35 concerts. Warfield appeared in Porgy and Bess on a tour of Europe sponsored by the US State Department in 1952 (he made six separate tours for the US Department of State, more than any other American solo artist). He starred in this production alongside opera singer Leontyne Price, who died soon after, but they didn't have much time together because of their commitments to two separate careers. They divorced in 1972, but they were pictured together in a 1963 studio recording of excerpts from Porgy and Bess.
He accepted an appointment as Professor of Music at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign in 1975. He became Chairman of the Voice Department later. He enrolled in 1994 at the Northwestern University's School of Music, where he stayed until his death.
He appeared in the première performances of Set I and Aaron Copland's Old American Songs in 1955, as well as the 1958 version for soloist and piano of the collection. (He also performed both sets of the songs.) His vocal skills were also on two recordings of Handel's "Messiah" (released in 1959), a classic, but heavily cut recording made in 1956, with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. Bernstein combined the Christmas and Resurrection sections into one large aria and choruses depicting Jesus' death. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Bernstein's The Westminster Choir were included on the Ormandy album, as well as Bernstein's The Westminster Choir.
In addition to acting and poetry recitation, Warfield was also successful in combating and poetry recitation. In a Hallmark Hall of Fame television production of "The Lord," he appeared twice on live television (both versions remain as kinescopes). He appeared in two Hollywood films, including a lead role in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's 1951 Technicolor remake of Show Boat. James Whitmore and José Ferrer appeared in his other film, Old Explorers (1990). Warfield played a cameo role as a tugboat captain in a nod to Showboat. Warfield in Show Boat footage has been included in numerous TV shows and/or films, including That's Entertainment! Warfield appeared in two other productions of the musical, the 1966 Lincoln Center production and a 1972 Vienna production. In three different recording albums of the show, he sang "Ol' Man River" on MGM Records, a 1962 studio album starring Barbara Cook and John Raitt on Columbia Masterworks, and the RCA Victor album made from Lincoln Center's production.
In 1951, he made his television debut in Show Boat and appeared on The Colgate Comedy Hour and on a programme called TV Recital Hall. In 1955, he appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show for the second time. He appeared on an episode of the Young People's Concerts in 1961 as a recital soloist, led by Leonard Bernstein. He received a Grammy Award in the "Spoken Word" category in March 1984 for his outstanding narration of Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait, accompanied by the Eastman Philharmonia [1]. On the PRI's program Riverwalk Jazz, he narrated a special jazz arrangement of music from Show Boat in the 1990s. In 1999, Warfield joined baritones Robert Sims and Benjamin Matthews in a trio dubbed "Three Generations." This ensemble, led by Arthur White, performed completely in the United States until Warfield's death in 2002.
Warfield began having issues with his voice in 1962, something he referred to in his autobiography. His voice had risen from bass-baritone to full-fledged bass by 1966, but he was unable to sing the climactic high note on Ol' Man River as well as the 1951 film version; to compensate how to sing even more clearly than he had before.
Warfield, who was also appearing on stage and television appearances, wasn't performing as well as he had in the past. He appeared in numerous orchestral works, including Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait, and he occasionally appeared in Arnold Schoenberg's 'Diete's "Song of the People"s. He reprised his role as Porgy in a Lake George Opera Festival production of Porgy and Bess in 1976. Despite his maladies, he performed on occasion during his remaining years, despite the fact that by then his singing voice had practically disappeared. In those years, when he sang "Ol' Man River," he would not perform it with the original lyrics, but with the modified ones that Paul Robeson used in his recitals beginning in 1938.
He died in Chicago in August 2002 following recovery from neck pains sustained a month earlier.
