Jess Walters

Jess Walters was born in Newark, New Jersey, in November 1908 and studied at the Juilliard School in New York. He made his début with the New York Hippodrome Opera Company in 1941 as Tonio in *Pagliacci*, and through the 1940s worked across the American operatic circuit before moving to Britain in 1947 to join the Royal Opera House Covent Garden — the company in which he remained as a principal baritone for over a decade.

His central repertoire was the Italian baritone roles of the standard operatic stage — the title roles in *Rigoletto* and *Falstaff*, Iago, Renato in *Un ballo in maschera*, Germont, Don Carlo in *La forza del destino*, Scarpia in *Tosca*, Amonasro in *Aida*, and the leading Mozart baritone parts (the Count in *Le nozze di Figaro*, Don Giovanni). He sang at Covent Garden as the resident American baritone of the early post-war ensemble under Karl Rankl, with substantial guest appearances at the Glyndebourne Festival, the Edinburgh Festival, the Vienna State Opera and the Teatro Colón. He worked extensively with Sir Thomas Beecham, Erich Kleiber and Rudolf Kempe in studio recording.

Walters returned to the United States in the late 1950s and taught at the University of Indiana. He died in New York in October 2000. Music Preserved’s archive includes a range of his Covent Garden work from the late 1940s and 1950s.