Davis Cunningham
Encyclopedia
Thomas Davis Cunningham was an American tenor
who had prominent career in opera
s, musical
s, concerts, and on television from 1949 through 1973.
, the son of an American doctor serving in the United States military. He studied singing at Wooster College and the Juilliard School
before making his professional stage debut in the 1939 musical Stars In Your Eyes
where he portrayed a handful of small roles. He returned to Broadway in 1941 as Jack in Kurt Weill
's Lady in the Dark
. That same year he signed a contract with the Philadelphia Opera Company
, joining their roster of principal tenors. However, Cunnigham was conscripted
into the United States Air Force
forcing him to postpone his opera career. He served as an Air Force Lieutenant during World War II from 1941-1946. Following the war he sang in operettas and musicals throughout the United States.
Cunningham finally made his operatic debut in 1949 with the Central City Opera
and was a regular presence at that house for many years. Beginning in 1952, he sang frequently on television for the NBC Opera Theatre
, including singing Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly
, Prince Anatole in War and Peace
, Pelléas in Pelléas et Mélisande
, and Belmonte in The Abduction from the Seraglio. In 1960 he portrayed Mario Cavaradossi in Tosca
for an ABC television production. On Dec 27, 1954 he portrayed Michele in the world premiere of Gian Carlo Menotti
's The Saint of Bleecker Street
on Broadway.
In 1954, Cunningham joined the roster of principal tenors at the New York City Opera
, where he first appeared in the title role of The Tales of Hoffmann in 1954. His other roles with the company included Rodolfo in La bohème
(1954), Prince Ramiro in La Cenerentola
(1955), Ernesto in Don Pasquale
(1955), and Vašek in The Bartered Bride
(1955). In 1958 he portrayed Hindley Earnshaw
in the world premiere of Carlisle Floyd
's Wuthering Heights
at the Santa Fe Opera
.
Cunningham was also an active concert performer. Among his notable orchestral appearances were roles in concert performances of rare operas, including Nadir in Bizet's Les pêcheurs de perles
(1953), Fernando in Enrique Granados
's Goyescas
(1956), and Chevalier de la Force in the New York premiere of Dialogues of the Carmelites
(1964). He also sang in a program of show tunes with the New York Philharmonic
under Richard Rodgers
in 1954. In 1959 he was the tenor soloist in Handel's Messiah
under conductor Eugene Ormandy
with the Philadelphia Orchestra
, soprano Eileen Farrell
, contralto Martha Lipton
, baritone William Warfield
, and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir
at Carnegie Hall
. His last public performance was with the Cincinnati Symphony under conductor James Levine
in 1973.
In the early 1970s Cunningham was a member of the voice faculty at the University of Utah
in Salt Lake City. In 1974 he moved to San Diego where taught singing out of a private studio until his death ten years later of a heart attack.
Tenor
The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
who had prominent career in opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
s, musical
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
s, concerts, and on television from 1949 through 1973.
Biography
Cunningham was born in the PhilippinesPhilippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
, the son of an American doctor serving in the United States military. He studied singing at Wooster College and the Juilliard School
Juilliard School
The Juilliard School, located at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, United States, is a performing arts conservatory which was established in 1905...
before making his professional stage debut in the 1939 musical Stars In Your Eyes
Stars in Your Eyes
Stars in Your Eyes is a 1956 British musical film directed by Maurice Elvey.-Plot:As the world of vaudeville gradually loses its attraction, more and more entertainers are losing their jobs. In hopes of fixing their financial problems, a group of entertainers band together and buy a run-down...
where he portrayed a handful of small roles. He returned to Broadway in 1941 as Jack in Kurt Weill
Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...
's Lady in the Dark
Lady in the Dark
Lady in the Dark is a musical with music by Kurt Weill, lyrics by Ira Gershwin and book and direction by Moss Hart. It was produced by Sam Harris. The protagonist, Liza Elliott, is the unhappy female editor of a fashion magazine, Allure, who is undergoing psychoanalysis...
. That same year he signed a contract with the Philadelphia Opera Company
Philadelphia Opera Company
The Philadelphia Opera Company was the name of two different American opera companies active during the twentieth century in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The first company was founded by impresario Oscar Hammerstein I in 1908. That company disbanded only two years later as a result of financial...
, joining their roster of principal tenors. However, Cunnigham was conscripted
Conscription in the United States
Conscription in the United States has been employed several times, usually during war but also during the nominal peace of the Cold War...
into the United States Air Force
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
forcing him to postpone his opera career. He served as an Air Force Lieutenant during World War II from 1941-1946. Following the war he sang in operettas and musicals throughout the United States.
Cunningham finally made his operatic debut in 1949 with the Central City Opera
Central City Opera
Central City Opera is the fifth-oldest opera company in the United States, founded in 1932. Each festival is presented in the 550-seat historic Central City Opera House built in 1878 in the gold mining era town of Central City, Colorado. Pelham G...
and was a regular presence at that house for many years. Beginning in 1952, he sang frequently on television for the NBC Opera Theatre
NBC Opera Theatre
The NBC Opera Theatre was an American opera company operated by the National Broadcasting Company from 1949 to 1964. The company was established specifically for the purpose of filming both established and new operas for television...
, including singing Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly
Madama Butterfly
Madama Butterfly is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, with an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. Puccini based his opera in part on the short story "Madame Butterfly" by John Luther Long, which was dramatized by David Belasco...
, Prince Anatole in War and Peace
War and Peace (Prokofiev)
War and Peace is an opera in two parts , sometimes arranged as five acts, by Sergei Prokofiev to a Russian libretto by the composer and Mira Mendelson, based on the novel War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy...
, Pelléas in Pelléas et Mélisande
Pelléas et Mélisande (opera)
Pelléas et Mélisande is an opera in five acts with music by Claude Debussy. The French libretto was adapted from Maurice Maeterlinck's Symbolist play Pelléas et Mélisande...
, and Belmonte in The Abduction from the Seraglio. In 1960 he portrayed Mario Cavaradossi in Tosca
Tosca
Tosca is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900...
for an ABC television production. On Dec 27, 1954 he portrayed Michele in the world premiere of Gian Carlo Menotti
Gian Carlo Menotti
Gian Carlo Menotti was an Italian-American composer and librettist. Although he often referred to himself as an American composer, he kept his Italian citizenship. He wrote the classic Christmas opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, among about two dozen other operas intended to appeal to popular...
's The Saint of Bleecker Street
The Saint of Bleecker Street
The Saint of Bleecker Street is an opera in three acts by Gian Carlo Menotti to an original English libretto by the composer. It was first performed at The Broadway Theatre in New York City on December 27, 1954. David Poleri and Davis Cunningham alternated in the role of Michele, and Thomas...
on Broadway.
In 1954, Cunningham joined the roster of principal tenors at the New York City Opera
New York City Opera
The New York City Opera is an American opera company located in New York City.The company, called "the people's opera" by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was founded in 1943 with the aim of making opera financially accessible to a wide audience, producing an innovative choice of repertory, and...
, where he first appeared in the title role of The Tales of Hoffmann in 1954. His other roles with the company included Rodolfo in La bohème
La bohème
La bohème is an opera in four acts,Puccini called the divisions quadro, a tableau or "image", rather than atto . by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger...
(1954), Prince Ramiro in La Cenerentola
La Cenerentola
La Cenerentola, ossia La bontà in trionfo is an operatic dramma giocoso in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. The libretto was written by Jacopo Ferretti, based on the fairy tale Cinderella...
(1955), Ernesto in Don Pasquale
Don Pasquale
Don Pasquale is an opera buffa, or comic opera, in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. The librettist Giovanni Ruffini wrote the Italian language libretto after Angelo Anelli's libretto for Stefano Pavesi's Ser Marcantonio ....
(1955), and Vašek in The Bartered Bride
The Bartered Bride
The Bartered Bride is a comic opera in three acts by the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana, to a libretto by Karel Sabina. The opera is considered to have made a major contribution towards the development of Czech music. It was composed during the period 1863–66, and first performed at the...
(1955). In 1958 he portrayed Hindley Earnshaw
Hindley Earnshaw
Hindley Earnshaw is a fictional character in Emily Bronte's novel Wuthering Heights. The brother of Catherine Earnshaw, father of Hareton Earnshaw, and sworn enemy of Heathcliff, he descends into a life of drunkenness, degradation, and misery after his wife Frances dies in childbirth, enabling...
in the world premiere of Carlisle Floyd
Carlisle Floyd
Carlisle Floyd is an American opera composer. The son of a Methodist minister, he based many of his works on themes from the South...
's Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights (opera)
Wuthering Heights is an opera in a prologue and three acts with music and a libretto by Carlisle Floyd. The work is adapted from Emily Brontë's novel of the same name. The opera premiered at the Santa Fe Opera on July 16, 1958 in a production directed by Irving Guttman...
at the Santa Fe Opera
Santa Fe Opera
The Santa Fe Opera is an American opera company, located north of Santa Fe in the U.S. state of New Mexico, headquartered on a former guest ranch of .-General history:...
.
Cunningham was also an active concert performer. Among his notable orchestral appearances were roles in concert performances of rare operas, including Nadir in Bizet's Les pêcheurs de perles
Les pêcheurs de perles
Les pêcheurs de perles is an opera in three acts by the French composer Georges Bizet, to a libretto by Eugène Cormon and Michel Carré. It was first performed on 30 September 1863 at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris, and was given 18 performances in its initial run...
(1953), Fernando in Enrique Granados
Enrique Granados
Enrique Granados y Campiña was a Spanish pianist and composer of classical music. His music is in a uniquely Spanish style and, as such, representative of musical nationalism...
's Goyescas
Goyescas (opera)
Goyescas is an opera in one act and three tableaux, written in 1915 by the Spanish composer Enrique Granados. Granados composed the opera to a Spanish libretto by Fernando Periquet y Zuaznabar with melodies taken from his 1911 piano suite, which was also called Goyescas...
(1956), and Chevalier de la Force in the New York premiere of Dialogues of the Carmelites
Dialogues of the Carmelites
Dialogues of the Carmelites , is an opera in three acts by Francis Poulenc. In 1953, M. Valcarenghi approached Poulenc to commission a ballet for La Scala in Milan; when Poulenc found the proposed subject uninspiring, Valcarenghi suggested instead a screenplay by Georges Bernanos, based on the...
(1964). He also sang in a program of show tunes with the New York Philharmonic
New York Philharmonic
The New York Philharmonic is a symphony orchestra based in New York City in the United States. It is one of the American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five"...
under Richard Rodgers
Richard Rodgers
Richard Charles Rodgers was an American composer of music for more than 900 songs and for 43 Broadway musicals. He also composed music for films and television. He is best known for his songwriting partnerships with the lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II...
in 1954. In 1959 he was the tenor soloist in Handel's Messiah
Messiah (Handel)
Messiah is an English-language oratorio composed in 1741 by George Frideric Handel, with a scriptural text compiled by Charles Jennens from the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. It was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742, and received its London premiere nearly a year later...
under conductor Eugene Ormandy
Eugene Ormandy
Eugene Ormandy was a Hungarian-born conductor and violinist.-Early life:Born Jenő Blau in Budapest, Hungary, Ormandy began studying violin at the Royal National Hungarian Academy of Music at the age of five...
with the Philadelphia Orchestra
Philadelphia Orchestra
The Philadelphia Orchestra is a symphony orchestra based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States. One of the "Big Five" American orchestras, it was founded in 1900...
, soprano Eileen Farrell
Eileen Farrell
Eileen Farrell was an American soprano who had a nearly 60 year long career performing both classical and popular music in concerts, theatres, on radio and television, and on disc. While she was active as an opera singer, her concert engagements far outnumbered her theatrical appearances...
, contralto Martha Lipton
Martha Lipton
Martha Lipton was an American operatic mezzo-soprano.-Biography:Lipton was born in New York City. She won a scholarship to the Juilliard School and made her debut as Pauline in Tchaikovsky's opera The Queen of Spades for the New Opera Company in Manhattan in 1941...
, baritone William Warfield
William Warfield
William Caesar Warfield , was an American concert bass-baritone singer and actor.-Early life and career:Warfield was born in West Helena, Arkansas and grew up in Rochester, New York, where his father was called to serve as pastor of Mt. Vernon Church. He gave his recital debut in New York's Town...
, and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir
Mormon Tabernacle Choir
The Mormon Tabernacle Choir, sometimes colloquially referred to as MoTab, is a Grammy and Emmy Award winning, 360-member, all-volunteer choir. The choir is part of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . However, the choir is completely self-funded, traveling and producing albums to...
at Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
. His last public performance was with the Cincinnati Symphony under conductor James Levine
James Levine
James Lawrence Levine is an American conductor and pianist. He is currently the music director of the Metropolitan Opera and former music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Levine's first performance conducting the Metropolitan Opera was on June 5, 1971, and as of May 2011 he has...
in 1973.
In the early 1970s Cunningham was a member of the voice faculty at the University of Utah
University of Utah
The University of Utah, also known as the U or the U of U, is a public, coeducational research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. The university was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret by the General Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret, making it Utah's oldest...
in Salt Lake City. In 1974 he moved to San Diego where taught singing out of a private studio until his death ten years later of a heart attack.