John McCollum
Encyclopedia
John McCollum is an American tenor
who had an active singing career in opera
s, concerts, and recitals during the 1950s through the 1970s. As an opera singer he performed with companies throughout North America, mostly working with second tier opera house
s. He was much more successful as a singer of oratorio
s and other works from the concert repertoire, and enjoyed a particularly productive and lengthy relationship with the Boston Symphony Orchestra
. As a concert singer he sang a wide repertoire but drew particular acclaim for his performances in the works of Johann Sebastian Bach
and George Friderich Handel.
, McCollum first worked as a journalist
and magazine
publisher before deciding to pursue a singing career. He began studying voice with Mynard Jones in Oakland, California
and then moved to New York City in the early 1950s where he became a pupil of Edgar Schofield. He also studied at the Tanglewood Music Center
under Boris Goldovsky
.
McCollum made his first concert appearance in NYC as the tenor soloist in a production of Felix Mendelssohn
's Elijah
at the Church of the Ascension
in November 1951 with soprano Beverly Wolff
and bass-baritone
Paul King. In 1952 he tied for first place in the American Theatre Wing
's singing contest with soprano Helen Clayton. That same year he made his Carnegie Hall
debut singing Prince Vasiliy Ivanovich Shuysky in a concert version of Modest Mussorgsky
's Boris Godunov
with conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos and the New York Philharmonic
. In 1953 he made his first appearance in a staged opera as Fenton in Giuseppe Verdi
's Falstaff
with Goldovsky's New England Opera Theatre. That same year he made his first appearance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra
(BSO) as the tenor soloist in Hector Berlioz
's Roméo et Juliette
with soprano Jennie Tourel
.
During the mid 1950s McCollum was highly busy performing as a concert soloist and performed with some frequency in operas with the New England Opera Theatre (NEOT). He sang frequently with the BSO under conductor Charles Munch
, often at the Tanglewood Music Festival
, performing works like the role of the evangelist in Bach's Johannes Passion
(1956). He was also a regular performer with the Dessoff Choirs
under conductor Paul Boepple, performing as a tenor soloist in oratorios like Handel
's Messiah
(1956) and Handel's Israel in Egypt (1957). One work which he performed with frequency during these years was J.S. Bach's Mass in B Minor, which he first performed in February 1955 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
under conductor Margaret Hillis
. He later performed the work with the BSO at Tanglewood in the summer of 1955 and with the Philadelphia Orchestra
at the Bethlehem Bach Festival in 1956. In March 1955 he sang Helenus in a lauded production of Berlioz's Les Troyens
with the NEOT opposite Eunice Alberts
as Cassandre, Marriquita Moll as Dido, and Arthur Schoep as Aeneas.
The year 1958 proved to be a banner year for McCollum. In April of that year he was the tenor soloist in Haydn's The Creation with sopranos Adele Addison
and Louise Natale, baritone Mack Harrell
, the New York Philharmonic, and conductor Robert Shaw
. Later that month he sang Ferrando in Mozart's Così fan tutte
with the Washington Opera Society in Washington, D.C.
The following June he made his European debut at the very first Festival dei Due Mondi
as Reuel in the world premiere of Lee Hoiby
's chamber opera
The Scarf
with Patricia Neway
and Richard Cross
. In August he performed the title role in Gioacchino Rossini
's Le comte Ory
at Tanglewood and in October he performed in Thomas Arne's rarely heard opera Comus
with The Little Orchestra Society
.
In 1959 McCollum performed Handel's Ode for St. Cecilia's Day with the NYP under conductor Leonard Bernstein
. He also returned to Tangelwood to perform with the BSO in Berlioz's Requiem
.
, the Canadian Opera Company
, the Cincinnati Opera
, the Seattle Opera
, the Washington National Opera
, and Vancouver Opera
among others. He sang four roles with the Santa Fe Opera
during the 1962 summer season: Ferrando, the second tenor in Igor Stravinsky
's Renard
, The Fisherman in Stravinsky's The Nightingale
, and Alfredo in La traviata
. He remained active with the BSO during the 1960s, performing in concerts of Berlioz's La damnation de Faust and Beethoven's Symphony No. 9
among others.
The year 1963 was an important year for McCollum's opera life. He began the year singing Licinius in Gaspare Spontini
's rarely heard opera La Vestale
for his debut with the American Opera Society
at Carnegie Hall. This was followed by an offer from Julius Rudel
, then director of the NYCO, to join the roster of principal tenors at his company. McCollum accepted and made his debut with the company in October 1963 as Don Ottavio in Mozart's Don Giovanni
. Then in December he recorded the role of King Kaspar in Gian Carlo Menotti
's Amahl and the Night Visitors
in a television profuction made by the N.B.C. Opera Company. He returned for one more opera with the NYCO in 1964, the world premiere of Lee Hoiby
's Natalia Petrovna.
After the 1960s McCollum's career began to slow down. He appeared mostly in concerts during the early 1970s and did not perform much after the mid 1970s. He taught for many years on the voice faculty of the University of Michigan
. He is currently living in retirement.
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 an active singing 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, concerts, and recitals during the 1950s through the 1970s. As an opera singer he performed with companies throughout North America, mostly working with second tier opera house
Opera house
An opera house is a theatre building used for opera performances that consists of a stage, an orchestra pit, audience seating, and backstage facilities for costumes and set building...
s. He was much more successful as a singer of oratorio
Oratorio
An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...
s and other works from the concert repertoire, and enjoyed a particularly productive and lengthy relationship with the Boston Symphony Orchestra
Boston Symphony Orchestra
The Boston Symphony Orchestra is an orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts. It is one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1881, the BSO plays most of its concerts at Boston's Symphony Hall and in the summer performs at the Tanglewood Music Center...
. As a concert singer he sang a wide repertoire but drew particular acclaim for his performances in the works of Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
and George Friderich Handel.
Early life and career 1922-1959
Born in Coalinga, CaliforniaCoalinga, California
Coalinga is a city in Fresno County, California. The population was 13,380 at the 2010 census, up from 11,668 at the 2000 census. It is the site of both Pleasant Valley State Prison and Coalinga State Hospital. Coalinga is located southwest of Fresno, at an elevation of 673 feet .-Early...
, McCollum first worked as a journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
and magazine
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
publisher before deciding to pursue a singing career. He began studying voice with Mynard Jones in Oakland, California
Oakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
and then moved to New York City in the early 1950s where he became a pupil of Edgar Schofield. He also studied at the Tanglewood Music Center
Tanglewood Music Center
The Tanglewood Music Center is an annual summer music academy in Lenox, Massachusetts, United States, in which emerging professional musicians participate in performances, master classes and workshops designed to provide an intense training and networking experience...
under Boris Goldovsky
Boris Goldovsky
Boris Goldovsky was a Russian conductor and broadcast commentator, active in the United States. He has been called an important "popularizer" of opera in America...
.
McCollum made his first concert appearance in NYC as the tenor soloist in a production of Felix Mendelssohn
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...
's Elijah
Elijah (oratorio)
Elijah, in German: Elias, is an oratorio written by Felix Mendelssohn in 1846 for the Birmingham Festival. It depicts various events in the life of the Biblical prophet Elijah, taken from the books 1 Kings and 2 Kings in the Old Testament....
at the Church of the Ascension
Church of the Ascension (New York)
The Church of the Ascension is an Episcopal church in the Diocese of New York, located at 36-38 Fifth Avenue and Tenth Street in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan New York City. From an austere beginning as a bastion of the evangelical movement it has become internationally known for...
in November 1951 with soprano Beverly Wolff
Beverly Wolff
Beverly Wolff was an American mezzo-soprano who had an active career in concerts and operas from the early 1950s to the early 1980s. She performed a broad repertoire which encompassed operatic and concert works in many languages and from a variety of musical periods...
and bass-baritone
Bass-baritone
A bass-baritone is a high-lying bass or low-lying "classical" baritone voice type which shares certain qualities with the true baritone voice. The term arose in the late 19th century to describe the particular type of voice required to sing three Wagnerian roles: the Dutchman in Der fliegende...
Paul King. In 1952 he tied for first place in the American Theatre Wing
American Theatre Wing
The American Theatre Wing is a New York City-based organization "dedicated to supporting excellence and education in theatre," according to its mission statement...
's singing contest with soprano Helen Clayton. That same year he made his 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....
debut singing Prince Vasiliy Ivanovich Shuysky in a concert version of Modest Mussorgsky
Modest Mussorgsky
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky was a Russian composer, one of the group known as 'The Five'. He was an innovator of Russian music in the romantic period...
's Boris Godunov
Boris Godunov (opera)
Boris Godunov is an opera by Modest Mussorgsky . The work was composed between 1868 and 1873 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is Mussorgsky's only completed opera and is considered his masterpiece. Its subjects are the Russian ruler Boris Godunov, who reigned as Tsar during the Time of Troubles,...
with conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos and 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"...
. In 1953 he made his first appearance in a staged opera as Fenton in Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...
's Falstaff
Falstaff (opera)
Falstaff is an operatic commedia lirica in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, adapted by Arrigo Boito from Shakespeare's plays The Merry Wives of Windsor and scenes from Henry IV. It was Verdi's last opera, written in the composer's ninth decade, and only the second of his 26 operas to be a comedy...
with Goldovsky's New England Opera Theatre. That same year he made his first appearance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra
Boston Symphony Orchestra
The Boston Symphony Orchestra is an orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts. It is one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1881, the BSO plays most of its concerts at Boston's Symphony Hall and in the summer performs at the Tanglewood Music Center...
(BSO) as the tenor soloist in Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts . Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a...
's Roméo et Juliette
Roméo et Juliette (symphony)
Roméo et Juliette is a "symphonie dramatique", a large-scale choral symphony by French composer Hector Berlioz, which was first performed on 24 November 1839. The libretto was written by Émile Deschamps and the completed work was assigned the catalogue numbers Op. 17 and H.79...
with soprano Jennie Tourel
Jennie Tourel
Jennie Tourel was a Russian-American operatic mezzo-soprano, known for her work in both opera and recital performances....
.
During the mid 1950s McCollum was highly busy performing as a concert soloist and performed with some frequency in operas with the New England Opera Theatre (NEOT). He sang frequently with the BSO under conductor Charles Munch
Charles Munch
Charles Munch may refer to:*Charles Munch , American artist*Charles Munch , orchestral conductorSee also:*Charles Munch discography, recordings of Munch, the conductor...
, often at the Tanglewood Music Festival
Tanglewood Music Festival
The Tanglewood Music Festival is a music festival held every summer on the Tanglewood estate in Lenox, Massachusetts in the Berkshire Hills in western Massachusetts....
, performing works like the role of the evangelist in Bach's Johannes Passion
Johannes Passion
The St John Passion , BWV 245, is a sacred oratorio of Johann Sebastian Bach from the Passions. The original Latin title Passio secundum Johannem translates to "The Suffering According to John" and is rendered in English also as St. John Passion and in German as Johannespassion...
(1956). He was also a regular performer with the Dessoff Choirs
Dessoff Choirs
-History:The Dessoff Choirs is an independent chorus based in New York City. Margarete Dessoff established the organization in 1930 as the union of two choirs she directed, the Adesdi chorus and the A Cappella Singers, whence the plural Choirs...
under conductor Paul Boepple, performing as a tenor soloist in oratorios like Handel
HANDEL
HANDEL was the code-name for the UK's National Attack Warning System in the Cold War. It consisted of a small console consisting of two microphones, lights and gauges. The reason behind this was to provide a back-up if anything failed....
'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...
(1956) and Handel's Israel in Egypt (1957). One work which he performed with frequency during these years was J.S. Bach's Mass in B Minor, which he first performed in February 1955 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Chicago, Illinois. It is one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1891, the Symphony makes its home at Orchestra Hall in Chicago and plays a summer season at the Ravinia Festival...
under conductor Margaret Hillis
Margaret Hillis
Margaret Hillis was an American conductor. She was the founder and first director of the Chicago Symphony Chorus.-Life:...
. He later performed the work with the BSO at Tanglewood in the summer of 1955 and 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...
at the Bethlehem Bach Festival in 1956. In March 1955 he sang Helenus in a lauded production of Berlioz's Les Troyens
Les Troyens
Les Troyens is a French opera in five acts by Hector Berlioz. The libretto was written by Berlioz himself, based on Virgil's epic poem The Aeneid...
with the NEOT opposite Eunice Alberts
Eunice Alberts
Eunice Alberts is an American contralto who had an active career as a concert soloist and opera singer during the 1950s through the 1980s. She began her career as a concert soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the young age of 19 and quickly became a lauded oratorio singer during the late...
as Cassandre, Marriquita Moll as Dido, and Arthur Schoep as Aeneas.
The year 1958 proved to be a banner year for McCollum. In April of that year he was the tenor soloist in Haydn's The Creation with sopranos Adele Addison
Adele Addison
Adele Addison is an African American lyric soprano who was an acclaimed figure in the classical music world during the 1950s and 1960s. Although she did appear in several operas, Addison spent most of her career performing in recital and concert...
and Louise Natale, baritone Mack Harrell
Mack Harrell
Mack Harrell was an American baritone who was regarded as one of the greatest concert singers of his generation....
, the New York Philharmonic, and conductor Robert Shaw
Robert Shaw (conductor)
Robert Shaw was an American conductor most famous for his work with his namesake Chorale, with the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus, and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. Shaw received 14 Grammy awards, four ASCAP awards for service to contemporary music, the first Guggenheim Fellowship...
. Later that month he sang Ferrando in Mozart's Così fan tutte
Così fan tutte
Così fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti K. 588, is an opera buffa by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart first performed in 1790. The libretto was written by Lorenzo Da Ponte....
with the Washington Opera Society in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
The following June he made his European debut at the very first Festival dei Due Mondi
Festival dei Due Mondi
The Festival dei Due Mondi ' is an annual summer music and opera festival held each June to early July in Spoleto, Italy, since its founding by composer Gian Carlo Menotti in 1958...
as Reuel in the world premiere of Lee Hoiby
Lee Hoiby
Lee Henry Hoiby was an American composer and classical pianist. Best known as a composer of operas and songs, he was a disciple of composer Gian Carlo Menotti. Like Menotti, his works championed lyricism during a time when such compositions were deemed old fashioned and irrelevant to modern society...
's chamber opera
Chamber opera
Chamber opera is a designation for operas written to be performed with a chamber ensemble rather than a full orchestra.The term and form were invented by Benjamin Britten in the 1940s, when the English Opera Group needed works that could easily be taken on tour and performed in a variety of small...
The Scarf
The Scarf
The Scarf is a chamber opera in one act by composer Lee Hoiby. The work uses an English libretto by Harry Duncan that is based on the short story The Witch by Anton Chekhov. Composed in 1955, the opera premiered on June 20, 1958 at the very first Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy in a...
with Patricia Neway
Patricia Neway
Patricia Neway is an American operatic soprano and musical theatre actress who had an active international career during the mid-1940s through the 1970s. She is particularly remembered for creating roles in the world premieres of several contemporary American operas, most notably Magda Sorel in...
and Richard Cross
Richard Cross (bass-baritone)
Richard Cross is an American bass-baritone who had an active international opera career from the late 1950s through the 1990s. Possessing a rich and warm voice, Cross sang a broad repertoire that encompassed works from a wide variety of musical periods and styles...
. In August he performed the title role in Gioacchino Rossini
Gioacchino Rossini
Gioachino Antonio Rossini was an Italian composer who wrote 39 operas as well as sacred music, chamber music, songs, and some instrumental and piano pieces...
's Le comte Ory
Le comte Ory
Le comte Ory is an opéra written by Gioachino Rossini in 1828. Some of the music originates from his opera Il viaggio a Reims written three years earlier for the coronation of Charles X...
at Tanglewood and in October he performed in Thomas Arne's rarely heard opera Comus
Comus (Arne)
Comus is a masque in three acts by composer Thomas Arne. The work uses an English libretto by John Dalton that is based on John Milton's 1634 masque of the same name. The work premiered at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London on 4 March 1738.-History:...
with The Little Orchestra Society
The Little Orchestra Society
The Little Orchestra Society is an American orchestra based in New York City. It was founded in 1947 by Thomas Scherman, who served as its conductor until his death in 1979. Since 1979, the conductor has been Dino Anagnost. Its membership has ranged between 45 and 60 musicians...
.
In 1959 McCollum performed Handel's Ode for St. Cecilia's Day with the NYP under conductor Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
. He also returned to Tangelwood to perform with the BSO in Berlioz's Requiem
Requiem (Berlioz)
The Grande Messe des morts, Op. 5 by Hector Berlioz was composed in 1837. The Grande Messe des Morts is one of Berlioz's best-known works, with a tremendous orchestration of woodwind and brass instruments, including four antiphonal offstage brass ensembles placed at the corners of the concert stage...
.
Later life and career 1960-present
Up to this point in his career, McCollum had mainly been busy performing as a concert singer and had not spent the majority of his time performing in operas. This began to change in early 1960s when he began to perform much more frequently in operas, although his concert career remained active. He performed with companies across North America during the 1960s, including the Opera Company of BostonOpera Company of Boston
The Opera Company of Boston was an American opera company located in Boston, Massachusetts that was active during the late 1950s through the early 1990s. The company was founded by American conductor Sarah Caldwell in 1958 under the name Boston Opera Group. At one time, the touring arm of the...
, the Canadian Opera Company
Canadian Opera Company
The Canadian Opera Company is an opera company in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is the largest opera company in Canada and the third largest producer of opera in North America. The COC performs in its own opera house, the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts.-History:For 40 years until...
, the Cincinnati Opera
Cincinnati Opera
Cincinnati Opera is an American opera company based in Cincinnati, Ohio and the second oldest opera company in the United States .-History:...
, the Seattle Opera
Seattle Opera
The Seattle Opera is an opera company located in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1963 by Glynn Ross, who served as the company's first general director through 1983, Seattle Opera's season runs from August to late May, with five or six operas offered and with eight to ten performances each, often...
, the Washington National Opera
Washington National Opera
The Washington National Opera is an opera company in Washington, D.C., USA. Formerly the Opera Society of Washington and the Washington Opera, the company received Congressional designation as the National Opera Company in 2000. Performances are now given in the Opera House of the John F...
, and Vancouver Opera
Vancouver Opera
Vancouver Opera is the second largest performing arts organization in British Columbia and the largest opera company in western Canada.It performs in the Queen Elizabeth Theatre accompanied currently by the Vancouver Opera Orchestra, one of two specialized opera orchestras in Canada...
among others. He sang four roles with 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:...
during the 1962 summer season: Ferrando, the second tenor in Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
's Renard
Renard (Stravinsky)
Renard, Histoire burlesque chantée et jouée is a one-act chamber opera-ballet by Igor Stravinsky, written in 1916. The Russian text by the composer was based on Russian folk tales from the collection by Alexander Afanasyev.The full Russian name of the piece is: Ба́йка про лису́, петуха́, кота́, да...
, The Fisherman in Stravinsky's The Nightingale
The Nightingale (opera)
The Nightingale is a Russian conte lyrique in three acts by Igor Stravinsky. It is generally known by its French name...
, and Alfredo in La traviata
La traviata
La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias , a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman...
. He remained active with the BSO during the 1960s, performing in concerts of Berlioz's La damnation de Faust and Beethoven's Symphony No. 9
Symphony No. 9 (Beethoven)
The Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, is the final complete symphony of Ludwig van Beethoven. Completed in 1824, the symphony is one of the best known works of the Western classical repertoire, and has been adapted for use as the European Anthem...
among others.
The year 1963 was an important year for McCollum's opera life. He began the year singing Licinius in Gaspare Spontini
Gaspare Spontini
Gaspare Luigi Pacifico Spontini was an Italian opera composer and conductor, extremely celebrated in his time, though largely forgotten after his death.-Biography:...
's rarely heard opera La Vestale
La vestale
La vestale is an opera composed by Gaspare Spontini to a French libretto by Etienne de Jouy. It was first performed at the Paris Opéra in Paris on December 15, 1807 and is regarded as Spontini's masterpiece...
for his debut with the American Opera Society
American Opera Society
The American Opera Society was a New York City based musical organization that presented concert and semi-staged performances of operas between 1951 and 1970...
at Carnegie Hall. This was followed by an offer from Julius Rudel
Julius Rudel
Julius Rudel is an American opera and orchestra conductor who emigrated to the United States from Austria at the age of 17 and studied conducting at the Mannes College of Music in New York City. He then forged a 35-year career with the New York City Opera, from 1944 to 1979, and was the Music...
, then director of the NYCO, to join the roster of principal tenors at his company. McCollum accepted and made his debut with the company in October 1963 as Don Ottavio in Mozart's Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...
. Then in December he recorded the role of King Kaspar in 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 Amahl and the Night Visitors
Amahl and the Night Visitors
Amahl and the Night Visitors is an opera in one act by Gian Carlo Menotti with an original English libretto by the composer. It was commissioned by NBC and first performed by the NBC Opera Theatre on December 24, 1951, in New York City at NBC studio 8H in Rockefeller Center, where it was broadcast...
in a television profuction made by the N.B.C. Opera Company. He returned for one more opera with the NYCO in 1964, the world premiere of Lee Hoiby
Lee Hoiby
Lee Henry Hoiby was an American composer and classical pianist. Best known as a composer of operas and songs, he was a disciple of composer Gian Carlo Menotti. Like Menotti, his works championed lyricism during a time when such compositions were deemed old fashioned and irrelevant to modern society...
's Natalia Petrovna.
After the 1960s McCollum's career began to slow down. He appeared mostly in concerts during the early 1970s and did not perform much after the mid 1970s. He taught for many years on the voice faculty of the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
. He is currently living in retirement.