Although John McCormack sang in opera in Italy and the USA, his career as Ireland's most famous tenor was spent largely on the concert platform.
Born in Athlone in 1884, he entered a national competition in Dublin in 1903 and won the gold medal, having had no formal training as a singer. In the same year he became a member of the Dublin Cathedral Choir and began to study with the choirmaster. A period of further study in Milan led to his operatic début in Savona, Italy, in 1906. The following year he made his concert début in London and soon became sought after internationally.
In 1909 he sang at the San Carlo Opera in Naples and made his American début at the Manhattan Opera House in New York. He was immediately engaged to sing Alfredo in Verdi's La Traviata at The Metropolitan Opera, New York, where he also appeared between 1912 and 1914, and 1917 and 1919. In the 1910/11 season he sang at the Chicago Opera, after which he left the operatic stage altogether.
His career as a concert tenor was spectacularly successful, particularly in America, where he was naturalised as a citizen in 1919. In 1928 he was given the title of Count by Pope Pius XI and named Papal Chamberlain.
McCormack brought his intense interest in Italian repertoire and technique to everything he sang. Somehow he managed to combine a rock solid, pure, classical singing technique, with the extraordinary clarity of diction which enhanced his interpretation of the folksongs and sentimental ballads of his native land.
He died in Ireland in 1945. In 1984 both Ireland and America marked the centenary of his birth with the issue of commemorative postage stamps.
