Dear Listers,
Yesterday would have been the 90th birthday of perhaps the greatest lyric tenor that ever lived. In light of this I'd like to share something that happened to me yesterday. I was in my early morning class (Historical Perspectives of Vocal Pedagogy) with Dr. Austin and three other students. As the class went along I said, " lets make sure we all go home and play some of our favorite Jussi records to remember his 90th birthday." We then spoke about Jussi and his amazing voice for a while. Later in the day I went to my voice lesson. Since I'm singing Handel's "Waft her Angels"- I brought in a recording of Peerce singing it on LP. When I went over to the record player there was a record there that just said "La Boheme" on it. I took it off and asked Dr. Austin, "who was the tenor on this." He said he had not listerned to it yet because it was a loose record he found in some old stuff he had. Anyway, late last night I was studying in Austin's office and I remember that I still had not played a recording of Jussi all day. Still wondering who was on the Boheme LP, I decided to put it on- near the middle of side one. The FIRST thing I heard were the words, "Che gelida manina" sung by -you guessed it- Jussi Bjoerling. A great feeling came over me as I thought about how his singing has touched my heart over the years. If anyone else has JB stories to share, please do.
We miss you Jussi....
Take Care All,
Taylor L. Ferranti Doctoral Candidate in Vocal Pedagogy LSU
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