A CELEBRITY NAMED GUN KRONZELL

Back in the 1960's, opera mezzo Gun Kronzell's performance schedule looked like a phone book. She was getting rave reviews everywhere. So, let's take a time trip back to her hay-day.

The photo here is of Gun Kronzell and Luciano Pavarotti in 1991.

A CELEBRITY NAMED GUN KRONZELL

The 1960's must've been quite a decade for my mother. She was a working opera star active in a dozen German theatres. She sang oratories in Belgium, France and England. She met my dad in Hannover in 1966, toured with him through Europe, appeared on Irish TV and was still able to travel back to the calm home base in her beloved home town of Kalmar in Sweden.

My mom loved Kalmar. It was her centre, her safe haven. As a global citizen touring the world and working with and meeting stars like Luciano Pavarotti, Alan Rickman and the Swedish King, she had been at home most everywhere. But her heart was Swedish. Her soul belonged to Kalmar.

As a little boy in Gothenburg, I was exposed to my mother's amazing imagination. She told me these wonderful good night stories about the trolls Uggel-Guggel and Klampe-Lampe. They eventually turned into the high point of my day. The coolest thing, though, is that I am passing on these stories to my daughter. She is starting to invent stuff for the stories just like I did. I see that she loves the inventive and crazy creativity of our stories just as much as I did. Having my mom as a good night story teller and my daddy as a professional author was the best mixture a boy could ask for. I thank them for that. For triggering my imagination. For opening the vaults of endless creativity. For that is what it is about, guys. All of it. Creation. Creating always greater versions of ourselves. New parts of ourselves we thought were gone. New pieces of ourselves we didn't know we had. Pieces that appear once we just trust ourselves to be more than we thought we were or could be.

There are so many old documents in my cupboards and closets. Old clippings and reviews that my mom kept as evidence of her glorious career. One paper in particular describes what kind of a career she was having back then.

I also know, being the only child, that if I don't transcribe these documents and have them published somehow, nobody will. I could ask my wife or daughter to transcribe these old things, but it is actually my job as a son to spread the word of what kind of folks they were. They worked so hard for what they became and accomplished. They perfected their art so beautifully that a new generation just deserves to hear about them and damn great they were.

Singers, actors, authors, directors, teachers, scholars: they were everything and more.

So, here we go: back to the beginning of the 1960's. John F. Kennedy was still alive. The Space Race was still on. Armstrong had not yet landed on the moon. And a certain young opera singer named Gun Kronzell travelled the world and inspired people with her voice.

This is what Gun herself wrote in a document that was intended for a newspaper that was about to write an article about her. Her schedule looks like a big city phone book. So many operas and oratories to learn. She must've been rehearsing constantly.

"These are some of my concerts and performances that I have been assigned to carry out during this season of 1962-63:

On March 11th, I am singing Brahms' Altrapsodie and Mozart's Requiem in Beleke with Matthias Büchel as conductor. Then, I am travelling to Bünde to sing Bach's Matthew Passion on March 31st. The April 1st, I am singing the same piece in Ahlen.

I am travelling to Brügge in Belgium on April 4th to sing Beethoven's 9th Symphony.

On April 17th I am again singing the Matthew Passion by Bach in Bergisch-Gladbach with Paul Nitsche as conductor.

I am back in Sweden on May 31st to sing at the 100 year anniversary of the Kalmar Girl's School.

On July 8th, I am singing Bach's Vom Reiche Gottes in the Church of Zion in Bethel.

In the German Vocal Festival in Essen, I am singing Haydn's Theresien Mass and Koerpp's The Fire of Prometheus.

In November, I am singing Bruckner's Mass in F-Minor in Witten.

On November 28th, 29th and 30th I am performing Beethoven's Mass in C Minor in the Mühlheim City Arena and Duisburg City Theatre.

On December 2nd and 3rd, 1962, I am singing Bach's Christmas Oratory in the Church of Zion in Bethel. On December16th, I am singing the same piece in Mainz. I am also singing the Christmas Oratory by Bach in Soest with Claus Dieter Pfeiffer as conductor and in Unna with Karl Helmut Herrman as conductor.

January 12th, 1963, hears me singing Bach's Christmas Oratory again in Bethel.

On March 31st I have been hired to sing Dvorak's Stabat Mater in Lippstadt.

Those were the concerts. Now for my operatic performances:

I have been hired as Mezzo Soprano at the City Opera in Bielefeld since September of 1961. This season has seen me perform 5 roles.

The Innkeeper's Wife in Moussorgsky's Boris Godunov. That production had its premiere in September here. But I also guested with that part twice in Cologne this year. We have performed this opera 13 times so far.

The second role was Emilia in Verdi's Othello. We premiered with that on Christmas Day and have played it 10 times so far.

The third role for me this year was Dritte Dame (Third Lady) in The Magic Flute by Mozart. Our musical director Bernhard Conz often guest conducts in Italy and in Vienna. 5 shows of this so

The gypsy fortune teller Ulrica in Verdi's A Masked Ball had its premiere on January 23rd and this show has been playing for sold out houses 8 times so far.

Another Gypsy lady role, Czipra, in Johann Strauss' The Gypsy Baron had its premiere on March 6th.

My next role, Hippolytte in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, is going to be fun.

A new colleague of mine arrived this year. He is the Swedish son of an archbishop. His name is Helge Brillioth."

Not only did her schedule look like a phone book, the reviews were as impressive as her CV.

My mom had just returned from a tour through Ireland with my dad and appeared on Irish TV. She was pregnant with me while singing Ortrud in Wagner's Lohengrin. The daily newspaper wrote, on December 28th, 1968:

"The best thing that the Opera House of Graz in Austria offered its ensemble was Gun Kronzell with her astounding portrayal of Ortrud. She already made a lasting impression as Mrs. Quickly and confirmed her skills here as well. This voice is a real winning triumph for our city: its intensity and wide range impresses. Gun Kronzell's Ortrud, if directed by a top notch world director, could become really interesting and a global phenomenon."

One critic spoke of a voice that was illuminate in glory. The journal "Die Wahrheit" wrote that she sang a magnifiscent Ortrud with dramatic expression filled with movement and vocal prowess.

Kleine Zeitung remarked on December 28th, 1968, that she was the only one that truly could shine in that production. Her clear and bright mezzo produced a brilliant fully controlled performance worthy of extraordinary theatrical mention.

Ewald Cwienk from the Wiener Kurier wrote on January 3rd about the high level of her excellent vocal work.

But even across the country in Augsburg they wrote about the masterful vocal presence and powerful expression of the Hannover's leading mezzo Gun Kronzell. They even went so far as to say that the audience in the olden days would have interrupted the scene after the operatic Plea of the Gods just to give the singer a standing ovation.

Opern Welt, one of Germany's leading operatic journals, described her thusly: "Gun Kronzell (Hannover), vocally and dramatically convincing devotee of sensual passion."

But her operatic skill alone did not gather rave reviews. Her collaboration with her baritone husband Herbert Eyre Moulton (1927-2005) had the European critics throwing proverbial roses at their feet.

The Reutlinger General Anzeiger, on February 5th, 1968, published the following rave review after a triumphant show in Regensburg, Germany:

"BIG VOICES IN A SMALL CONCERT HALL

A successful concert performed at the America House

They do not only sing duets. The married artistic couple Gun Kronzell (a mezzosoprano from Sweden) and Herbert Eyre Moulton (a baritone from the U.S.) are a living duet. When they appear on stage, they grab each other's hands before singing and try successfully not to compete with each other, but they try to achieve symbiosis. During the solo songs it becomes evident that the wife's lyric expression, vocal volume, skill and artistic temperament is a perfect mirror image of the husband's beautifully placed Irish baritone with its lyric joie de vivre.

Both voices are obviously too big for this concert hall. It would have been great to hear them in the Carnegie Hall or at the London Festival Hall, where Miss Kronzell has sung recently, in order to hear the voices reverberate and swing in locations fit for their level of brilliance.

And still: compliments to the America House for hiring them in the first place. This concert distinguished itself through a sophisticated programme and excellent interpretation. But even sophisticated programmes don't lift off the ground if the pieces in question don't have the longing of a lover's kiss. This programme did. The singers communicate. They love what they do.

The concert started out with three duets by Henry Purcell, vitalized by constant sounds of musical joy. This was Baroque Art at its most lucious, where voices mingled and climaxed in full, soft alto tones and a natural high baritone that never seemed forced or uncomfortable.

The three American Songs by Aaron Copland that followed, sung by Gun Kronzell, were functional straight forward pieces with a little bit of romantic flight hidden within the framework. The last song, Going to Heaven, explosively vocalized by the soloists with an accentuated pronounciation on the word HEA-VÉN, was effective to say the least.

The baritone spoke a few words between songs in his self-proclaimed Chicago-German idiom, claiming that composer Charles Ives was the primitive composer of musical history. The singer disproved this. Ives is THE genius of American Music. The folkloristic song 'Charlie Rutlage' is a musical Western in itself: exciting, juicy, full of artistic trivialities. It was sung excellently and served by the singer as a juicy artistic peppersteak of sorts. It was a dramatic number that became a fast speech rotating kind of song, not unlike the Pitter-Patter vocabulary present in Gilbert & Sullivan's operetta chants. The third song, 'The Election', is a political elective song, but no direct campaign hit. National Pathos came as expected and the audience was thrilled to hear it.

The first half of the show ended with duets: the pure enjoyment of the magic songs by Dvorak were the topics of conversations at the intermission bar.

The Swedish mezzosoprano sang Swedish songs with clean artistic expression after the break. The succeeding Hölderlin-songs by the Irish composer Seán O'Riada - a cycle in four parts in which the simplistic harmonies of the beginning returned at the end - could not have been sung better by the baritone Herbert Eyre Moulton. These compositions from 1965 are actually ancient in style and format. These stilistically mysterious thought-songs were triumphs of passionate interpretation.

The finale provided us with the necessary crowning glory: five songs from Gustav Mahler's 'Des Knaben Wunderhorn'. These were not duets. Instead, the songs were divided into dialogues. We found the sadness, we experienced the parody of superiority, scenes were acted out and still nobody feared losing the essence of the tones.

The accompanist Karl Bergemann proved himself to be an accomplished expert in all mentioned musical areas. No harmony was left unsung, no heart was left untouched, the singers were never overpowered by the sound of his piano playing and still he knew how to present himself well. His instrumentation entailed a magnetic expressive force. His support was a counterpoint that even more famous colleagues would have envied taking them by their musical hands. The audience were eternally thankful, providing the three artists with standing ovations."

Critiques such as these give even music lovers who didn't have the joy of hearing "The Singing Couple" live the hint of how wonderfully entertaining artists they were.

The amazing thing was that my parents were full fledged and extremely experienced artists already when I was born. They accomplished being successful artists and still being there for me at all times.

I spent a week in London with my mom in 1979. We met my Godfather, the composer James Wilson, and went to musicals like "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "Oliver!" (with a real dog running around the musical London stage, we weaved that, too, into the good night stories). This trip provided me with good memories. It was a dear part of my childhood whose many events were included in our good night stories: my stuffed dog Ludde fell in love with our hotel chamber maid Maria. That's what we said, anyway.

With my dad, I went to Copenhagen during early 80's three winters in a row. Two guys going to the opera, eating Spaghetti, going to theatre to see an uncut version of Hamlet (the box office lady called Hamlet "a very good Danish play"), going to see a Bond movie in a Copenhagen cinema called the Colloseum (an Italian waiter told us: "The Colloseum is in Rome!") and running through Copenhagen after the royal guards to Queen Margarete's palace only to see them vanish into the courtyard and away beyond the entrance. We had hoped to see the Changing of the Guards, but only saw them march. It didn't matter. It was all good.

All three of us (the holy family) took trips to Sweden and America together, played board games on Friday nights, went to art museums, laughed until we cried on the living room couch we called Clothilde, took long trips in the Volkswagen we called Snoopy and invited my best friends for pancake breakfasts on Sunday mornings.

My parents were witty, generous, experienced people with lots of spirit. They were able to take responsibility for their lives as adults and still have some crazy spontaneous fun along the way.

I will always be eternally thankful for their fantastic influence. What they gave me I can pass on to my daughter. And they are our Guardian Angels. What a fantastic job they are doing. As always.