My first year in New York, my friend Larry Bassman was stunned to learn I'd never been to an opera, so he picked up the phone and ordered two tickets to that night's performance at the Met. It was Peter Grimes, starring Jon Vickers. What a tough act to follow.
Yet, as good as it was—and you can see from the clip that it was riveting—the biggest goose bumps I ever got at the opera were from what I believe was Vickers' last performance at the Met, Parsifal,. That one shouldn't have worked at all, if you follow conventional wisdom—he was too old, his voice was growing coarse . . . .
Of course, what conventional wisdom ignored was that Vickers passionately wanted to create great art. And he did, setting a performance standard I may never see equaled.
