Jon Vickers

While Jon Vickers was best known as a Wagnerian heldentenor, he was also capable of singing lieder, Baroque opera, spinto Italian roles, and even the comic role of Vasek in The Bartered Bride. His voice and physique both radiated power, and his stage presence was one of the most impressive of his era. Like many singers with huge voices, he sometimes resorted to crooning soft passages, but the effect of such a voice scaled down was still highly impressive. He was a man of equally powerful convictions and refused to sing roles he considered to be lacking in morality, or whose la...