Joseph Schmidt - Una furtiva lagrima (Film excerpt, 1934)

On the 80th anniversary of his death, Dead Tenors’ Society pays tribute to Romanian tenor Joseph Schmidt (1904-1942). Born in the town of Davideni in what was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Ukraine), he began his vocal studies at the Czernowitz Synagogue, where he sang alto in the choir. His first public appearance as a tenor took place in Czernowitz in 1924 when the twenty-year-old Schmidt sang a solo recital of operatic arias and songs. The young tenor made his way to Berlin where he studied with Hermann Weissenborn for the next few years. Schmidt’s operatic debut came about in a rather strange fashion…he answered a newspaper ad placed by a Berlin radio station that was seeking a tenor for an upcoming broadcast. Following his audition, Schmidt was hired on the spot and sang his very first operatic role…Vasco da Gama in Meyerbeer’s L’Africaine…during a national radio broadcast of the opera in 1929. Other roles followed, including Rodolfo in La Bohème, Eleazar in La Juive and the title ro