Robert Merrill

Robert Merrill (June 4, 1917 – October 23, 2004) was an American operatic baritone and actor, who was also active in the musical theatre circuit. He received the National Medal of Arts in 1993.

Early life

Merrill was born Moishe Miller, later known as Morris Miller, in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York. He was the son of tailor Abraham Miller, originally Milstein, and his wife, Lillian (née Balaban), Jewish immigrants from Pultusk, Poland, near Warsaw. His paternal grandparents were Berl Milstein and Chana (née Mlawski), both from Pultusk, Poland.

His mother claimed to have had an operatic and concert career in Poland (a fact denied by her son in his biographies) and encouraged her son to have early voice training: he had a stutter, which wasn't apparent when singing. Merrill was inspired to pursue professional singing lessons when he saw the baritone Richard Bonelli singing Count Di Luna in a performance of Il Trovatore at the Metropolitan Opera, and paid for them with money earned as a semi-professional pitcher.

Radio and recordings

In his early radio appearances as a crooner he was sometimes billed as Merrill Miller. While singing at bar mitzvahs and weddings and Borscht Belt resorts, he met an agent, Moe Gale, who found him work at Radio City Music Hall and with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Arturo Toscanini. With Toscanini conducting, he eventually sang in two of the maestro's NBC Symphony broadcasts of famous operas, La traviata (with Licia Albanese, in 1946), and Un ballo in maschera (with Herva Nelli, in 1954). Both of those operas were recorded and later released on both LP and CD by RCA Victor. His ranking as an important NBC performer is evidenced by his inclusion in NBC's 1947 promotional book, NBC Parade of Stars: As Heard Over Your Favorite NBC Station, displaying Sam Berman's caricatures of leading NBC personalities.

Merrill's 1944 operatic debut was in Verdi's Aida at Newark, New Jersey, with the famous tenor Giovanni Martinelli, then in the later stages of his long operatic career. Merrill, who had continued his vocal studies under Samuel Margolis, made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera as winner of the Metropolitan Opera Auditions of the Air in 1945, as Germont in La Traviata. Also in 1945, Merrill recorded a 78 rpm album set with Jeanette MacDonald, featuring selections from the operetta Up in Central Park; MacDonald and Merrill sang two duets together on this album.

In 1951, Merrill recorded a series of operatic duets with the Swedish tenor Jussi Björling for RCA Victor, including a world-renowned recording of "Au fond du temple saint" from the opera Les pêcheurs de perles by Georges Bizet. That same year he participated in another celebrated RCA Victor recording, Bizet's Carmen with Risë Stevens and Jan Peerce, conducted by Fritz Reiner; he also later sang the same role in the Herbert von Karajan recording with Leontyne Price and Franco Corelli. In 1952 Merrill, Björling, and Victoria de los Ángeles made a widely admired RCA Victor recording of Puccini's La Bohème, conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham. In 1953, Merrill, Björling, de los Angeles and Zinka Milanov recorded the complete Pagliacci and Cavalleria Rusticana. In addition to his operatic recordings, he sang the baritone solos in the Leonard Bernstein recording of Ernest Bloch's Avodat Hakodesh.

Metropolitan Opera

His role in the musical comedy film Aaron Slick from Punkin Crick (1952) led to a conflict with Sir Rudolf Bing and a brief departure from the Met in 1951. Merrill sang many different baritone roles, and after the on-stage death of the celebrated Leonard Warren in 1960, became the Met's principal baritone, sharing that position in a few years with Cornell MacNeil. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he appeared under the direction of Alfredo Antonini in performances of arias from the Italian operatic repertoire for the open air Italian Night concert series at Lewisohn Stadium in New York City.

He was described by Time as "one of the Met's best baritones". Yet reviews were not consistently good: Opera magazine reported on a Metropolitan Opera performance of Barber of Seville in which Merrill delivered "by all odds the most insensitive impersonation of the season". He was accused by the reviewer of "loud, coarse sounds" and "no grace, no charm, as he butchered the text and galumphed around the stage".

Later career

Merrill appeared on "Voice of Firestone" with Joanne Hill.

Merrill also continued to perform on radio and television, in nightclubs and recitals. In 1973, Merrill teamed up with Richard Tucker to present a concert at Carnegie Hall—a first for the two "vocal supermen" (as one critic dubbed them), and a first "for the demanding New York public and critics," Merrill recalled. The event marked a precedent that eventually led to the "Three Tenors" concerts many years later. Merrill retired from the Met in 1976. In 1977, he appeared on the TV special "Sinatra & Friends," soloing "If I Were A Rich Man" and performing "The Oldest Established Permanent Floating Crap Game in New York" with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. For many years, he led services, often in Borscht Belt hotels, on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.

In honor of Merrill's vast influence on American vocal music, on February 16, 1981, he was awarded the prestigious University of Pennsylvania Glee Club Award of Merit.

First awarded in 1964, the Award of Merit honors an individual that has "made a significant contribution to the world of music and helped to create a climate in which our talents may find valid expression." his family, and his gravestone state that he was born in 1917.

Merrill married soprano Roberta Peters in 1952; however, they divorced shortly afterwards. He had two children with his second wife, Marion Machno, a pianist. Merrill liked to play golf and was a member of the Westchester Country Club in Rye, New York, for many years.

He wrote two books of memoirs, Once More from the Beginning (1965) and Between Acts (1976), and he co-authored a novel, The Divas (1978).

Merrill toured all over the world with his arranger and conductor, Angelo DiPippo, who wrote most of his act and performed at concert halls throughout the world.

Death

Merrill died on October 23, 2004, at his home in New Rochelle, New York, at age 87. He is interred at the Sharon Gardens Cemetery in Valhalla, New York, which is the Jewish division of Kensico Cemetery. His headstone features an opera curtain that has been drawn open.

His epitaph states: "Like a bursting celestial star, he showered his family and the world with love, joy, and beauty. Encore please."

Performances with the Metropolitan Opera

Robert Merrill sang 789 performances with the Metropolitan Opera in the following 21 roles:

{|class="wikitable sortable"

!Composer!!Opera!!Role!!First performance!!Last performance!!Total performances

|Verdi||La traviata||Germont||align="center" | 1945-12-15||align="center" | 1976-03-15||align="center" | 132

|Donizetti||Lucia di Lammermoor||Enrico||align="center" | 1945-12-29||align="center" | 1965-01-23||align="center" | 16

|Bizet||Carmen||Escamillo||align="center" | 1946-01-07||align="center" | 1972-01-04||align="center" | 81

|Mussorgsky||Boris Godunov||Shchelkalov||align="center" | 1946-11-21||align="center" | 1947-04-21||align="center" | 5

|Gounod||Faust||Valentin||align="center" | 1946-12-23||align="center" | 1972-05-04||align="center" | 48

|Verdi||Aida||Amonasro||align="center" | 1947-01-11||align="center" | 1973-06-01||align="center" | 72

|Rossini||Il Barbiere di Siviglia||Figaro||align="center" | 1947-11-15||align="center" | 1966-06-04||align="center" | 46

|Verdi||Il trovatore||Count di Luna||align="center" | 1947-12-11||align="center" | 1973-05-30||align="center" | 73

|Saint-Saëns||Samson et Dalila||High Priest||align="center" | 1949-11-26||align="center" | 1950-04-30||align="center" | 10

|Verdi||Don Carlo||Rodrigo||align="center" | 1950-11-06||align="center" | 1972-06-21||align="center" | 51

|Leoncavallo||Pagliacci||Silvio||align="center" | 1951-02-09||align="center" | 1951-02-09||align="center" | 1

|Leoncavallo||Pagliacci||Tonio||align="center" | 1952-03-14||align="center" | 1964-04-02||align="center" | 22

|Verdi||Rigoletto||Rigoletto||align="center" | 1952-11-15||align="center" | 1972-02-05||align="center" | 56

|Puccini||La bohème||Marcello||align="center" | 1952-12-27||align="center" | 1954-02-01||align="center" | 10

|Verdi||Un ballo in maschera||Renato||align="center" | 1955-02-26||align="center" | 1976-05-29||align="center" | 56

|Donizetti||Don Pasquale||Malatesta||align="center" | 1956-04-09||align="center" | 1956-12-10||align="center" | 8

|Ponchielli||La Gioconda||Barnaba||align="center" | 1958-12-11||align="center" | 1962-04-16||align="center" | 13

|Verdi||La forza del destino||Don Carlo||align="center" | 1961-12-12||align="center" | 1972-06-09||align="center" | 33

|Giordano||Andrea Chénier||Carlo Gérard||align="center" | 1962-10-15||align="center" | 1966-03-22||align="center" | 7

|Verdi||Otello||Iago||align="center" | 1963-03-10||align="center" | 1965-05-07||align="center" | 18

|Puccini||Tosca||Scarpia||align="center" | 1964-10-23||align="center" | 1974-12-09||align="center" | 11

|-class="sortbottom"

Studio recordings

Robert Merrill made at least 25 studio recordings of complete operas, including two Toscanini radio broadcasts:

{|class="wikitable sortable"

!Composer!!Opera!!Role!!Date

|Bizet||Carmen||Escamillo||1951, 1963

|Donizetti||Lucia di Lammermoor||Enrico||1961

|Leoncavallo||Pagliacci||Silvio||1953

|Leoncavallo||Pagliacci||Tonio||1967

|Mascagni||Cavalleria rusticana||Alfio||1953

|Ponchielli||La Gioconda||Barnaba||1967

|Puccini||La bohème||Marcello||1956, 1961

|Puccini||Manon Lescaut||Lescaut||1954

|Puccini||Il tabarro||Michele||1962

|Rossini||Il barbiere di Siviglia||Figaro||1958

|Straus||Der tapfere Soldat||Bumerli||1952

|Verdi||Aida||Amonasro||1961

|Verdi||Un ballo in maschera||Renato||1946, 1966

|Verdi||Falstaff||Ford||1963

|Verdi||La forza del destino||Don Carlo||1964

|Verdi||Rigoletto||Rigoletto||1956, 1963

|Verdi||La traviata||Germont||1946, 1960, 1962

|Verdi||Il trovatore||Conte di Luna||1964