Joseph Schmidt

In addition to German, which was his first language,[4] and Yiddish, he learned Hebrew and became fluent in Romanian, French and English.

His talents were quickly recognised and by 1924 he was featured in his first solo recital in Czernowitz singing traditional Jewish songs and arias by Verdi, Puccini, Rossini and Bizet.

In 1929, he went back to Berlin, where Cornelis Bronsgeest, a famous Dutch baritone, engaged him for a radio broadcast as Vasco da Gama in Meyerbeer's L'Africaine.

In 1937, he toured the United States and performed in Carnegie Hall together with other prominent singers such as Grace Moore.

As the Second World War was about to erupt, Schmidt was in Belgium and booked steamship passage from Marseilles to the United States.

Just two days later, on 16 November 1942, while attempting to recover at the nearby Waldegg Inn, the famous singer collapsed.

He had a sweet lyric tenor voice with an easy high register, sailing up even to a high D. His voice was also agile, and he possessed a perfect and dependable trill, which he demonstrated on his recordings of "Ah si ben mio" from Il trovatore and "Una furtiva lagrima" from L'elisir d'amore.

[1] The most thorough discography of the tenor is that of Hansfried Sieben, published in the quarterly journal Record Collector (Chelmsford, Essex) for June 2000.