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Samuel Ramey
Ramey performing in Rinaldo in 1984
Born	(1942-03-28) March 28, 1942 (age 82) Colby, Kansas
Occupation	Opera singer
Years active	1973–present
Children	1

Samuel Ramey (born March 28, 1942) is an American operatic bass-baritone. At the height of his career, he was greatly admired for his range and versatility, having possessed a sufficiently accomplished bel canto technique which enabled him to sing the music of Handel, Mozart and Rossini but with enough vocal power to handle the more overtly dramatic roles in Verdi, Puccini, and Meyerbeer operas.

Early life

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Ramey graduated from Colby High School in Colby, Kansas in 1960. He studied music in high school and in college at Kansas State University, as well as at Wichita State with Arthur Newman. At Kansas State, he was a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity.

Ramey was in the chorus of Don Giovanni in 1963, with Norman Treigle in the title role, while studying with the Central City Opera in Central City, Colorado. After being an apprentice with the Santa Fe Opera in Santa Fe, New Mexico, he worked for an academic publisher in New York City before he had his first breakthrough while at the New York City Opera debuting on March 11, 1973, as Zuniga in the 1875 Bizet opera Carmen. He took over that role as well as the Faustian devils in Gounod's Faust and Boito's Mefistofele, which was vacated by the early death of Treigle.

As his repertoire expanded he worked extensively in European theaters notably in Berlin, Hamburg, London, Paris, Milan, and Vienna in addition to summer festivals in Aix-en-Provence, Glyndebourne, Pesaro, and Salzburg.

Later career

In January 1984, Ramey made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in Handel's Rinaldo. He became a fixture at the Teatro alla Scala, Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, Vienna State Opera, the Paris Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the New York City Opera, the San Francisco Opera and the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires (Attila, The Rake's Progress, Mefistofele) since then. In July 1985 he was cast as Bertram in the historic revival in Paris of Giacomo Meyerbeer's Robert le diable.

Ramey has sung in Mozart's Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro and, in the bel canto repertoire, in Rossini's Semiramide, The Barber of Seville, Il Turco in Italia, L'italiana in Algeri, and La Gazza Ladra; in Donizetti's Anna Bolena and Lucia di Lammermoor and Bellini's I puritani. In the dramatic repertoire, Ramey has been acclaimed for his "Three Devils": Boito's Mefistofele, Gounod's Faust and Berlioz's dramatic legend Damnation of Faust. Other dramatic roles of his have included Verdi's Nabucco, Don Carlo, I masnadieri, I Lombardi and Jérusalem, as well as Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann (he portrayed all four villains).

In 1990, he sang the role of Joe in Jerome Kern's Show Boat in a concert performance at Avery Fisher Hall with Jerry Hadley and Frederica von Stade. A number of previously obscure operas with strong bass/bass-baritone roles have been revived solely for Ramey, such as Verdi's Attila, Rossini's Maometto II and Massenet's Don Quichotte. He provided the voice for The Beast, the main antagonist of the 2014 animated miniseries Over the Garden Wall. In 1996, he gave a concert at New York's Avery Fisher Hall titled "A Date with the Devil" in which he sang 14 arias representing the core of this repertory. He continued to tour with the program throughout the world. In 2000, he presented the concert at Munich's Gasteig Concert Hall. The performance was recorded live and was released on compact disc in summer 2002.

He formerly served as a member of the faculty at Roosevelt University's Chicago College of Performing Arts and is currently a distinguished professor of Opera at Wichita State University's School of Music. He was named an inaugural member of the WSU College of Fine Arts Hall of Fame in 2015. He is a national patron of Delta Omicron, an international professional music fraternity. He reprised the title role of "Duke Bluebeard" in Opera Omaha's production of Béla Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle in April 2013 in Omaha, Nebraska.

Recordings

Ramey has made an exceptionally high number of recordings documenting many of his main operatic roles as well as collections of miscellaneous arias, other classical pieces, and crossover discs of popular American music. He has appeared on television and video productions of the Met's productions of Carmen and Bluebeard's Castle, San Francisco's production of Mefistofele, Glyndebourne's production of The Rake's Progress, and Salzburg's production of Don Giovanni.

Family

He married his third wife, soprano Lindsey Larsen, on June 29, 2002. They have one son.

Repertoire

Select discography

• Bernstein: On the Town, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, Deutsche Grammophon
• Handel: Messiah, conducted by Andrew Davis, EMI
• Massenet: Chérubin, conducted by Pinchas Steinberg, RCA Victor Red Seal
• Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro, conducted by Georg Solti, Decca
• Rossini: Otello, conducted by Jesús López Cobos, Philips
• Rossini: The Rossini Bicentennial Birthday Gala, conducted by Roger Norrington, EMI
• Marilyn Horne: Divas in Song, RCA Victor Red Seal
• A Salute to American Music (Richard Tucker Music Foundation Gala XVI, 1991), conducted by James Conlon, RCA Victor Red Seal
• Mozart: Don Giovanni, conducted by Herbert von Karajan, Deutsche Grammophon

Select videography

• The Metropolitan Opera Gala 1991, conducted by James Levine, Deutsche Grammophon

References

1. Ralph Blumenthal, "The Devil? He's a Basso Whose Voice Is Heavenly", The New York Times, February 17, 1998.
2. Anthony Tommasini, "An Aw Shucks Manner, but Don't Be Fooled: He's an Absolute Devil", The New York Times, November 5, 1999.
3. "About the Performer: Samuel Ramey". Los Angeles Philharmonic. March 2000. Retrieved September 16, 2017.
4. "Flicka and Friends: From Rossini to Show Boat (1990)". Live from Lincoln Center. IMDb. April 18, 1990. Retrieved September 17, 2017.
5. Houston, Shannon M. (December 26, 2014). "The Best Animated TV Shows of 2014". Paste. Retrieved September 16, 2017.
6. Ashley, Tim (July 5, 2000). "A Date with the Devil: Samuel Ramey". The Guardian. Manchester, UK. Retrieved September 16, 2017.
7. "Samuel Ramey". L2 Artists. Retrieved 2024-01-03.
8. "Opera star Sam Ramey to be WSU guest artist in residence" (Press release). Wichita State University. August 29, 2012. Retrieved September 16, 2017.
9. "College of Fine Arts Hall of Fame selects 12 for inaugural induction class" (Press release). Wichita State University. March 9, 2015.
10. "Sam Ramey in Bluebeard's Castle". Opera Omaha. May 18, 2012. Archived from the original on September 5, 2015. Retrieved September 16, 2017.
11. Feeney, Anne. "Samuel Ramey: Discography". AllMusic. Retrieved September 16, 2017.
12. "WEDDINGS; Lindsey Larsen, Samuel Ramey". The New York Times. June 30, 2002. Retrieved September 16, 2017.
13. "Samuel Ramey Biography". Musician Biographies. Retrieved 24 March 2022.
14. "Interview with Samuel Ramey as he makes his début in his home town". www.gramilano.com. 2011-10-06. Retrieved 2024-01-03.

Sources

• Samuel Ramey's website, samuelramey.com; retrieved January 25, 2010.
• Ramey with Bach cantata recordings, bach-cantatas.com; retrieved July 25, 2010.
• List of "Articles on Samuel Ramey", nytimes.com; retrieved July 25, 2010.
• Scovell, Jane, Samuel Ramey: American Bass, Baskerville Publishers, 2010; ISBN 978-1-880909-76-8

YouTube

• Samuel Ramey's Youtube Channel
• On YouTube, singing THE MESSIAH
• 73 year-old Samuel Ramey singing the role of Grand Inquisitor in DON CARLO.
• Samuel Ramey in the 'Commendatore Scene' from the Metropolitan Opera's 1990 production of Don Giovanni, with Kurt Moll and Ferruccio Furlanetto

Further reading

• Interview with Samuel Ramey, October 22, 1987

• 1942 births
• Living people
• People from Colby, Kansas
• Kansas State University alumni
• Wichita State University alumni
• American operatic bass-baritones
• American operatic basses
• Grammy Award winners
• Singers from Kansas
• Classical musicians from Kansas
• Roosevelt University faculty
• 20th-century American male opera singers
• 21st-century American male opera singers