George London - His Greatest Performances [CD de audio] Richard Wagner, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johannes Brahms, Rudolf Kempe,

Triumph and tragedy are never far away, and few singers have experienced that bitter truth more intensely than George London . Impressive for his height, his slim, athletic figure, his elegant bearing and his pure masculinity, he was also blessed with a magnificent voice, which in three short years catapulted him to the operatic firmament as one of the best singers of his time. Wieland Wagner called it 'the answer to all my prayers', Birgit Nilsson wrote: 'I had many wonderful colleagues who fascinated me. Some had great voices, others had a good sense of music, then there were wonderful actors and great personalities. But George London - he had it all.' The young London began his career learning the ways of the United States music business. He could dance like a screen idol and dance like a Broadway star, but for a singer starved of the operatic scene, there were few opportunities in the United States. London headed to Europa . When the Vienna State Opera was on tour in Holland and Belgium in 1949, he auditioned for conductor Karl Böhm in Brussels. George London began the luckiest decade of his career, long before the onset of medical problems that forced him to retire from the stage in the mid-1960s. Vienna, Bayreuth and New York were the settings where he experienced his greatest successes, and He was the first non-Russian to play the role of Boris Godunov at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. The recordings on this album present George London 's vocal legacy from Broadway to Bayreuth, from Mozart to Mussorgsky. They document a chapter in the history of 20th-century operatic singing and the achievement in that field of an exceptional artist and individual.