Preserved on hundreds of records, Richard Tauber’s art has lost none of its power through the decades. He was considered an idol of the masses; an outstanding personality of the chaotic roaring twenties, who was admired and adored. Most of the contemporary publications on the art of singing awarded him a place of honour among the top tenors of all time. He was compared with Caruso, Schipa, McCormack and several other greats. 

From the lives of great singers of the past, we can conclude that as a general rule, it is some unusual natural gift that provides the main impetus for seeking a singing career. From boyhood days, Tauber wanted to become an opera singer. His musicality was more than average, his appearance was plain, besides he was handicapped by extreme near-sightedness in one eye. Tauber was not to be discouraged by this. Both his parents were theatre actors and so, he believed, he too belonged in the theatre. 

Tauber enrolled as a student at the conservatory in Frankfurt where he learned composition, conducting and piano but continued to nurse a strong desire to become a singer. Tauber’s singing teacher in Freiburg, Karl Beines, had this to say about his early lesson: “I tested the boy, he sang the love song from Die Walküre for me and I found that the voice was small and limited in the high and low ranges but in the middle range it had a timbre that made me take special notice. But what I liked about the boy were his musicality and his temperament.”

Tauber’s greatest skill lay in his ability to turn the little that he had received from nature into something truly remarkable. 

During his years in Dresden, from 1913 to 1918, and later as a guest artiste till 1926, he mastered 80 operatic roles comprising almost the entire repertory for the lyric to youthful dramatic tenor. It was in Dresden that he first sang major Mozart roles like Tamino, Belmonte, Don Ottavio regularly in addition to many other parts. One of the high points of these Dresden years was his portrayal of Calaf in the first German performance of Turandot in 1926.

Though audiences in Dresden and Berlin liked Tauber, his main ambition was to sing in Vienna. During his time in Dresden, he tried to join the Vienna State Opera without success at first.

However, in 1920, he made a guest appearance there and then continued as a member of that opera house till 1938. Vienna and Berlin were the two main cities where he performed. At Salzburg and Munich, he often served as an interpreter of works by Mozart. His fine sense of music, his excellent art of legato singing and his perfectly produced mezzo voice made him the leading Mozart tenor of his time.

A biographical article on Tauber on the website of 401 Dutch Divas – In Opera & Concert gives an account of his career which had begun to reach its peak in the 1920s. “…in 1922, [he] accepted a contract with the Vienna State Opera, and this gave him the opportunity to conduct at the Volksoper Wien but he also incurred the usual penalties for contract-breaking at Dresden. He had hardly arrived in Vienna when he accepted an offer to sing Armand in Frasquita at the Theatre an der Wien.”

In 1924, he started devoting himself more towards operetta and achieved incredible fame. “Tauber became one of the star tenors at both the Berlin and Vienna state operas and managed to arrange his contracts for four months at each, with four left for tour and operetta,” the article further mentions. At this time, he made guest appearances at Hamburg, Cologne, Munich and Dresden.

In the same year, he met “the soprano Carlotta Vanconti who was making her debut in Countess Maritza. She soon divorced her Italian husband and married Tauber,” adds the writer further indicating that their mutual interest must have been purely musical for they parted in 1928 and divorced two years later. 

As Tauber continued to give memorable performances, his portrayal of Don Ottavio on 5th March 1924 prompted critics at the German newspaper Die Zeit to write, “Tauber’s performance reached its climax in Don Giovanni. It had never happened before that Don Ottavio, who usually remains in the background, received a storm of applause and that Don Giovanni himself was overshadowed.” 

From the mid-twenties, he was engaged with Franz Lehár, suggesting and helping finish the latter’s operettas which made the pair famous worldwide. In 1931, Tauber came to London for his first season in operetta and also undertook his first concert tour of the US. In the same year, he went back to Vienna to fulfil his contract to sing Mozart and works like La bohème and Madama Butterfly, in all about 25 performances.

The aforementioned biographical account then shifts the focus to the mid-thirties when Tauber met Diana Napier and married her in 1936. His London debut in grand opera was in Die Zauberflöte under Beecham in 1938. The following year, he sang in The Bartered Bride followed by Don Giovanni in Italian. Tauber and his wife applied for British citizenship by naturalisation which came through in 1940.

With the onset of the Second World War, financial considerations led Tauber to record popular pieces for the label, EMI. When the war ended, Tauber took to conducting to rest his voice which had been giving him some trouble. He was later diagnosed with lung cancer. 

The article outlines the fitting end of a remarkable career. In a full-circle moment, when the Vienna State Opera was in London for a guest season in 1947, it invited Tauber to sing the role of Don Ottavio at Covent Garden which was very successful. He thus ended his career. His left lung was removed the following week. Tauber died on 8th January 1948. 

The Stuart-Liff Collection features several LPs of the classic Mozartian as well as his other roles.  

The NCPA houses the world-famous Stuart-Liff Collection of 6,000 books, 11,000 LPs and 12,000 CDs on Western classical music. This collection was generously donated to the centre in 2009 by Vivian Liff, on behalf of George Stuart and himself, as a gesture of their friendship with Chairman Mr. Khushroo N. Suntook, an avid collector and connoisseur himself. The collection is an invaluable source for research by musicologists and students as well as for general music lovers. The library housing the collection is open from 10 am to 5.15 pm on weekdays.