George London (bass-baritone)

[4] In the summer of 1945 Antal Doráti invited his longtime friend, the Hungarian bass Mihály Székely, to sing at the first concert of the newly reorganized Dallas Symphony Orchestra.

After performing widely with tenor Mario Lanza and soprano Frances Yeend as part of the Bel Canto Trio in 1947–48, London was engaged by the Vienna State Opera, where he scored his first major success in 1949.

In 1950, he sang the role of Pater Profundis in Mahler's Eighth Symphony, conducted by Leopold Stokowski, with Carlos Alexander and Eugene Conley among the other soloists.

He made his debut with the Metropolitan Opera in 1951 as Amonasro in Aida, and sang over 270 performances, both baritone and bass roles, such as Figaro and Count Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro, The Speaker in The Magic Flute, Mandryka in Arabella, Scarpia in Tosca, the title role in Don Giovanni, Boris in Boris Godunov, Escamillo in Carmen, Iago in Otello, Amfortas in Parsifal, Wolfram in Tannhäuser, the four villains in The Tales of Hoffmann, Golaud in Pelléas et Mélisande, and Mephistopheles in Faust.

He also recorded Puccini's Tosca with Mario Del Monaco and Renata Tebaldi under Francesco Molinari-Pradelli conducting the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.

During his Met career, in 1956, he appeared on Ed Sullivan's television program in an abridged version of act 2 of Tosca, opposite Maria Callas, conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos.

In 1958, London performed the leading role of Wotan, in the groundbreaking recording of Richard Wagner's opera Das Rheingold, conducted by Georg Solti, and produced by John Culshaw for Decca.

This problem increased so much that shortly after singing Wotan in Die Walküre at the Met in March 1965, he canceled his upcoming appearances at the Bayreuth Festival to rest and ideally recover his voice.

London subsequently received injections of Teflon in his paralyzed vocal cord – then the state-of-the-art treatment for this condition – which filled it out and therefore restored his voice to some extent.