Born in 1891 in Linz, Germany, Richard Tauber first studied conducting and composition at the Frankfurt Conservatory, before concentrating on training as a singer. He was the illegitimate son of an actor/theatre director.
After his début in 1919 as Mozart’s Tamino ( in The Magic Flute) in the Saxony town of Chemnitz, he quickly became well known throughout the German speaking countries and was heard at the Salzburg and Münich festivals. In Dresden in 1926, due to the indisposition of the tenor booked to sing Calaf in the German première of Puccini’s Turandot, Tauber took over the part, learning it in three days.
After engagements in Vienna he began to sing in more and more operetta and became the composer Franz Lehár's preferred tenor. After the Nazis moved in he came to England and became naturalized. He was welcomed to Covent Garden, where he sang Mozart rôles - Tamino, Belmonte (Die Entführung aus dem Serail) and Don Ottavio (Don Giovanni) as well as Jenik in Smetana’s The Bartered Bride.
TauberΓÇÖs recording output of popular and classical music was phenomenal and he was also busy conducting and writing his own operetta, Old Chelsea. In 1948, when the Vienna State Opera paid a post-war visit to Covent Garden, he asked to sing a performance of Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni. He astounded his colleagues and everyone with the beauty of his singing with only one lung functioning. A week later he was operated on to remove the defective lung and he died within a few months.
To whatever type of music he performed Richard Tauber brought the skill and refinement of a fully trained musician.
