Obituary, Gabriel Bacquier (1924-2020)

The French baritone Gabriel Bacquier, who made definitive recordings of Rossini's Guillaume Tell and Massenet’s Thaïs and also excelled in Italian repertoire, has died aged 95.

Bacquier was born in Béziers in 1924, and was passionate about singing from early childhood; he enrolled at the Paris Conservatoire in 1945, beginning his career in Belgium five years later with José Beckman’s Compagnie Lyrique and becoming an ensemble-member at La Monnaie in 1953, where his repertoire included the title-role in the baritone version of Massenet’s Werther, Valentin in Gounod’s Faust, and Lescaut in Massenet’s Manon. By the late 1950s he had sung major roles at two of the Paris opera-houses, and his natural gravitas on stage was already winning him considerable acclaim as mature characters such as Sharpless in Madama Butterfly and Germont in La traviata.

Bacquier’s international breakthrough came in 1960, when he made his debut at Aix-en-Provence as Mozart’s Don Giovanni in a production which also included Teresa Stich-Randall, Leyla Gencer and Luigi Alva and was televised across Europe. (Fifty years later he spoke out in no uncertain terms about Dmitri Tcherniakov’s new staging of the opera at the 2010 Festival, which he described as a ‘pornographic exercise which betrays the work’). He went on to sing Giovanni in many of the world’s major houses, and recorded it for Richard Bonynge (with Joan Sutherland as Donna Anna) in 1969; in later years he also made his mark as Leporello, with The New York Times declaring him a ‘superior singing actor’ when he appeared in the role at the Metropolitan Opera in his mid-sixties. Other key Mozart roles included Count Almaviva, which he sang at Glyndebourne in the early 1960s and subsequently recorded under Otto Klemperer, and Don Alfonso in Così fan tutte.

But it was in French-language repertoire that Bacquier truly dominated the field: during the 1970s and 80s he made a string of landmark recordings of operas including Rossini’s Guillaume Tell, Gounod’s Mireille, Massenet’s Thaïs and Don Quichotte, Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann (on which he sang the four villains), Enescu’s Oedipe, and Debussy’s Pélleas et Mélisande. Operetta, which had played a significant role in his early career, also featured in his discography, with key recordings including the role of Agamemnon opposite Jessye Norman’s heroine in La belle Hélène, Don Andrès in La Périchole, and rarities by Charles Lecocq and Louis Varney. He worked regularly with living composers, creating roles in new operas including Menotti’s Le dernier sauvage (1963), Daniel-Lesur’s Andréa del Sarto (1969), and Paul Danblon’s Cyrano de Bergerac (1980).

Bacquier was also a force to be reckoned with in Italian opera, with particular successes including Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi and Scarpia (which he sang regularly at the Met and also recorded in French), Verdi’s Iago and Falstaff, Rossini’s Bartolo, and Donizetti’s Dulcamara and Don Pasquale; his final operatic appearance was in the latter role, at the Opéra-Comique in 1994.

After his official retirement from performance Bacquier held teaching positions in Paris and Monaco, and continued giving masterclasses until well into his eighties. His awards and honours included the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, Officier de L’Ordre national du Mérite, and the Orphée d’Or Herbert von Karajan. He died at home in Normandy on 13th May, four days before his 96th birthday.

Gabriel Bacquier - a selected discography