Louis Richard (1889-1977)
began working life as a postal employee
in his native Belgium. A chance meeting
led to a relatively late change of direction
and in 1915 he entered the conservatoire
in Mons. Clearly his talent was latent
– and the circumstances of the time
may equally have been propitious, because
towards the end of the First World War
he’d made his stage debut singing as
a lyric bass. He joined a series of
provincial companies and then gradually
ascended the ladder of local success:
Mons, Strasbourg – where Ropartz heard
and admired him in Fauré’s Penelope
–Biarritz and Ostend. By 1923 he was
singing in Brussels at La Monnaie as
a lyric bass and low baritone and three
years later he ascended to the position
of principal baritone. He retained the
position for fully a quarter of a century.
Richard sang all the
expected French roles and some unexpected
ones too. He sang a lot of the Italian
roles and a significant amount of Wagner
– ninety-seven roles all told in three
thousand operatic performances. Throughout
his career he shared the stage with
Mary Garden, Fanny Heldy and Supervia,
as well as a host of lesser-known singers.
He continued singing in concert until
1958 and then retired; teaching never
tempted him.
In this two CD set
we have a run of acoustic Chantals,
made in London in 1922, and a longer
series of electric Columbias recorded
between 1928 and 1936. The discs tend
to focus on the French repertoire though
we do have examples of his Puccini and
Wagner and Rossini amongst others. What
all the records show is that the early
training as a bass left a pervasive
though not unattractive heaviness in
the voice – questions that relate also
to matters of colour and weight. Limitations
can clearly be heard in the Chantals,
recorded shortly after his debut. He’s
rather weak and unsupported in the lower
registers and one can see why it was
prudent to move up. His colleague Marguerite
Thys is rather shrill and intermittently
unpleasant to listen to. With the brass
band and small complement of strings
accompanying, these sides reflect a
transitional early point in Richard’s
career.
Much better are the
Columbias by which time Richard’s voice
had settled on his lyric baritone. His
Gounod Faust sounds remarkably Italianate
for a French speaking Belgian artist
but his Bizet is not at all distinctive.
That said it’s rather fascinating to
hear him in something as unusual as
the aria from Eugene Diaz’s Benvenuto
Cellini because, whilst the voice
itself lacks colour and mobility, it
reminds one of the excellent work Richard
did in propagating new Franco-Belgian
work in Brussels and elsewhere. Throughout
in fact we find straightforward, masculine
singing, effectively extroverted if
not always especially subtle. Perhaps
the pick is the Saint-Saëns Henry
VIII aria – splendidly done - in
which he lightens and inflects the voice
with great assurance.
Small deficiencies
tend to limit ultimate appreciation
though. His Adam is stirring with a
good florid upper extension but the
runs are untidy. Where we might expect
some character – as in the Thomas, say,
or Massenet - we get instead a pleasant,
if strenuous musicality but a rather
nasal uniformity of approach. It seems
not unreasonable to note that on the
evidence of these discs he comes across
as a highly effective though ultimately
limited singer.
The transfers have
obviously been derived from good quality
shellacs; even the Chantals sound good
with one exception (disc two, track
thirteen). There are full discographical
details and very thorough trilingual
notes with excellent photographic reproductions.
So this is altogether a very worthy
and worthwhile tribute to one of Belgium’s
leading baritones.
Jonathan Woolf
Louis Richard (baritone) 
