The annual operatic Halloween story!

Jussi Björling, publicity shot taken around 1940

This story stars my all-time favorite singer, the incomparable Jussi Björling, who not only had the greatest voice G-d ever put in a human throat (or at least a male throat), he was also more often than not a warm-hearted and and incredibly generous person. His widow Anna-Lisa, in her wonderful biography Jussi, talks about how he loved suprising people with expensive gifts. So, especially considering that he rarely did any opera that could be associated with horror (Faust? Not really, although I think he did Max in Die Freischutz very early in his career), you would hardly think that his name would come up on Halloween, especially since in Sweden, they do their trick-or-treating around Easter!

Apparently sometime in the late 1940s, or perhaps the early 1950s, Jussi was at a party in Stockholm which eventually turned into a singalong, and he was shocked to hear a young man sing art songs in about four or five languages very, very well. Jussi was mightily impressed, and went up to the young fellow (who, like most of the party attendees, was not a professional singer), and said "You know, you are really very good. Would you like me to arrange an audition for you at the Royal Opera?" (That is, of course, the Royal Opera, Stockholm, not Covent Garden). Intrigued, the young man said yes. Well, Jussi arranged the audition, and the high muckety-mucks at the Royal Opera were as impressed as Jussi, to the point where they offered the promising singer a place in the Royal Opera School. He told them he would think about it, but a few days later he came back to Jussi and said "I'm sorry, Mr. Björling, but I don't have the money to live in Stockholm full-time. Besides, I think my path to fame and fortune lies elsewhere." Well, he may have been one of the relatively few people who actually could say no to Jussi, but he was right. Because do you know who that young man was?

Alright, everybody...

One....

Two....

Three...

CHRISTOPHER LEE!

(Now you see what this has to do with Halloween.)

Actually Lee has an absolutely wonderful speaking voice and I'm not surprised he could sing well enough to impress Jussi - I imagine he must be a bass, although I suppose he could be a bass-baritone or even a baritone. His mother was an Italian countess, which accounts for both his facility with languages and his obvious affinity for "high culture", which probably many horror fans (or people who look down their nose at horror films) wouldn't have expected. I think he actually made a recording of songs a few years ago (in his seventies!), but I can't find it. In light of this revelation, I think it's terrible that he never sang in any of his films, to the best of my knowledge.

But can you imagine what might have happened if he had taken Jussi up on his offer? Instead of Saruman in Lord of the Rings, he might have been Hagen, or even Wotan, in Wagner's Ring! Or he could have been the title character in Märschner's Der Vampyr (and probably made that opera very popular) instead of the many Draculas he did for Hammer Horror! Thank goodness, I'm sure he's too classy to have appeared in John Moran's The Dracula Diary!

And King Phillip might not have been a bad idea, either.

On a side note - the actor who possessed the most beautiful speaking voice I've ever heard had to be George Sanders, most famous for his roles as Bois-Guilbert in Ivanhoe and Addison DeWitt in All About Eve. Not surprisingly, he could sing superbly as well, and often did so at parties, although again like Lee, unfourtunately, he doesn't seem to have sung in any of his films. He was apparently so good that he was actually offered Scarpia by one of the West Coast opera companies (I'm not sure which one), but he turned it down because he "didn't want to be an opera singer". What a pity. That would have been something to see and hear!

Especially if Jussi were the Cavaradossi...