Sanford Sylvan's was one of my favorite voices of all time. It wasn't simply beautiful and expressive: it had a personal quality, as if he was singing just to you. Very few singers have reached me on that level - Victoria de los Angeles and Dame Janet Baker come to mind - and it is so sad to think that Sandy's voice has been stilled, at the age of 66.
I met Sanford Sylvan long before his name came to prominence in the vocal music field. In the early 1970s, while he was a student at the Manhattan School of Music, Sandy worked as an usher at The Met. At that time, he had long blonde hair that flowed down his back to his waist, and ice-blue, incredible eyes.
Those were the great, heady years of my opera-loving career; I would make frequent 4-day trips from Syracuse to New York City, staying at the Henry Hudson Hotel and hearing the great singers of the last Golden Age at both New York City Opera and The Met. I had fallen in with a group of deranged young fans - about a dozen of us - who went crazy over such titans as Sills, Nilsson, Cossotto, and Bergonzi. We spent intermissions arguing over who was the best Violetta or Dutchman; we waited patiently at the stage door to meet our idols, and then adjourned to the old O'Neill's for fondue and more discussion, into the wee hours. And then on to an all-nite diner at Columbus Circle where we listened to the house tapes we had made.
We all of us, both guys and girls, had a crush on Sandy Sylvan. Since he saw us at the opera all the time, he became friendly with us. We would always invite him to O'Neill's, and a couple of times he joined us. He was on the quiet side; we knew he was a voice student, but then...wasn't everyone? Who would have guessed that, years later, he'd be at New York City Opera and making marvelous recordings.
I first saw Sanford Sylvan onstage at the 1987 summer fest at Purchase, New York, as Mozart's Figaro in the Peter Sellars production, set at Trump Tower. In the seasons to come, he sang Leporello, the Speaker in MAGIC FLUTE, the King of Scotland in Handel's ARIODANTE, and Collatinus in Britten's RAPE OF LUCRETIA at New York City Opera. In each of these diverse roles, he made a vivid impression.
A champion of the music of John Adams, Sanford appeared in NIXON IN CHINA and THE DEATH OF KLINGHOFFER. In 1989, the baritone premiered Adams's The Wound Dresser, settings of Walt Whitman's Civil War poems, which had been composed specially for him.
In May 2011, I finally had an opportunity to experience Sanford Sylvan's iconic performance of The Wound Dresser live, in an concert given by the Oregon Symphony at Carnegie Hall. Both vocally and verbally, his was a remarkable interpretation, with a deeply personal resonance. He sang so beautifully, and I had every reason to believe I'd be hearing him again.
The baritone voice has always had a special appeal for me; from the very first opera LP I owned as a pre-teenager, featuring the great baritones of the day - Leonard Warren and Robert Merrill - this sonorous vocal range has seemed to have a hot-wire to the human spirit.
Over time, two baritones came to epitomize for me all that can be enriching in the art of singing: Dmitry Hvorostovsky and Sanford Sylvan. They were so different in repertory and in the scope of their respective careers, but both moved me to the core. And now they are gone.
From Samuel Barber's Hermit Songs, "The Desire for Hermitage" tells me everything I love about Sanford Sylvan's voice:
Sanford Sylvan - Barber ~ The Desire for Hermitage
"Ah! To be all alone in a little cell
with nobody near me;
beloved that pilgrimage before the last pilgrimage to death.
Singing the passing hours to cloudy Heaven;
Feeding upon dry bread and water from the cold spring.
That will be an end to evil when I am alone
in a lovely little corner among tombs
far from the houses of the great.
Ah! To be all alone in a little cell, to be alone, all alone:
Alone I came into the world
alone I shall go from it."