Thomas, Jess

▪ 1994

      U.S. operatic tenor (b. Aug. 4, 1927, Hot Springs, S.D.—d. Oct. 11, 1993, San Francisco, Calif.), sang a number of lyric roles but became best known as a Wagnerian heldentenor. He participated in local musical activities as a child, studied psychology at the University of Nebraska (B.A., 1949) and at Stanford University (M.A., 1954), and worked as a high school counselor. A professor at Stanford, Otto Schulman, persuaded him to make opera his career. Thomas made his debut with the San Francisco Opera in 1957 and then worked for several years in Europe, mainly Germany. He sang Parsifal at Bayreuth in 1961 under Wieland Wagner and for a number of years performed with German opera companies, including those of Stuttgart, Karlsruhe, and Munich (where he was made a Kammersänger [court singer] of the Bavarian State Opera). His Metropolitan Opera debut (1962) was as Walther in Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Other major roles included, in Wagner, Lohengrin and Tristan; in Strauss, Bacchus in Ariadne auf Naxos and the Emperor in Die Frau ohne Schatten; and Saint-Saëns' Sampson, Lensky in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, and Florestan in Beethoven's Fidelio. In 1966 he created the role of Octavius Caesar in Samuel Barber's Antony and Cleopatra, the inaugural work of the Metropolitan in its new home at Lincoln Center. He made a number of recordings. An imposing man over 1.8 m (6 ft) tall, Thomas had an athletic build that he liked to show off onstage, and he was highly regarded for the dramatic power of his acting as well as his singing.

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