12/19/2023 0 Comments Samba vw kurt bainum![]() ![]() Feeling the need for further study, Baum traveled to Italy to work with Eduardo Garbin in Milan and with faculty at Rome's Accademia Santa Cecilia. After singing a variety of lyric roles at Zurich, Baum was engaged the following year by the Deutsches Theater for a succession of more dramatic roles. Heard by the Intendant of the Zurich Opera, Baum was engaged for that company and made his debut there in 1933 singing in Alexander von Zemlinsky's Der Kreidekreis. By 1933, Baum was sufficiently well prepared to win the Vienna International Singing Competition, taking first prize among 700 contestants. Urged by friends to sing professionally, Baum left medical school and enrolled at Berlin's Music Academy in 1930. According to one story - perhaps true, perhaps not - his singing voice gained in timbre and strength when his nose was broken by famous German boxer Max Schmeling (there may have been some truth to the event having taken place, but Baum was noted for having a tight vocal production from the very beginning of his career). ![]() He also evinced a strong interest in music. During this period, Baum engaged in a number of athletic activities, becoming the amateur boxing champion of Czechoslovakia. Urged by his businessman father to become a doctor, Baum spent his high school and college years in Cologne, Germany, before entering medical school at Prague University in 1927. That he could apply himself to artistic high purpose can be heard on a Traubel/Melchior disc of Wagner in an extended scene from Lohengrin. Whatever his deficiencies as an artist, he was an exemplar of longevity. Noted throughout his career for stentorian top notes, he later wrote several treatises on preservation of the voice and singing well in old age. Long after his nominal retirement from the stage, he continued to make concert appearances. A dramatic tenor alternately gauche and exciting, Kurt Baum filled a crucial spot for the Metropolitan Opera and other houses without ever quite having attained star status. ![]()
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