James McCracken

James McCracken was born in Gary, Indiana, in December 1926 and studied at Columbia University and at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. He made his début with the Central City Opera in 1952 as Rodolfo in *La bohème*, and joined the Metropolitan Opera in 1953 in comprimario roles. He spent most of the 1950s in supporting parts, then took the unusual step of leaving the company in 1957 to retrain his voice with Marcello Conati in Milan, building it into a fuller dramatic tenor.

He returned to the Metropolitan in 1963 as Otello — the title role of Verdi’s opera, in which he became the leading American tenor of the 1960s and 1970s. His central repertoire was the heavier dramatic tenor parts: Otello (which he sang over 100 times at the Met alone), Calaf, Manrico, Radames, Don Carlo, Canio in *Pagliacci*, Florestan in *Fidelio*, and the title roles in *Samson et Dalila* and *Tannhäuser*. He worked at Covent Garden, the Vienna State Opera, La Scala, the Salzburg Festival and the Paris Opéra. His weight, vocal stamina and stage presence — he stood six-foot-four — made him an unusually visible figure on the major operatic stages.

McCracken died of a stroke in New York in April 1988. Music Preserved’s archive includes a range of his dramatic tenor work, particularly Otello.