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Josef Mann (1883-1921) was born into a musical family in the Austro-Hungarian city of Lemburg. Some sources give the year of Mann’s birth as 1879, but key events in the tenor’s life and career make the later date seem more plausible. He studied law at the University of Lemburg, receiving his degree in 1906. However, Mann spent his student years vacillating between law and his first love, singing. The budding singer soloed with various choirs and sang in a few amateur productions (as a baritone), eventually abandoning his promising law practice. Mann retrained his voice as a tenor and made his stage debut at The Meijskim Theatre in Lemburg on October 25, 1909. The role was Jontek in Moniuszko’s opera Halka and the local critics were unanimous in their praise. Although he completed his doctorate at the University in 1910, Mann’s singing career blossomed, with appearances in Prague, Krakow, Warsaw, Bucharest, Munich, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Berlin and Vienna. In a very short period of time, Mann mastered over thirty roles including Don José in Carmen, Florestan in Fidelio, Assad in Die Königin von Saba, Eléazar in La Juive, Canio in Pagliacci, Turiddu in Cavalleria Rusticana, Rodolfo in La Bohème, Manrico in Il Trovatore, The Duke in Rigoletto, Radames in Aïda, Walther in Die Meistersinger and the title roles in Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, Parsifal, Tristan und Isolde and Otello. In 1920, Mann was contracted by the Metropolitan Opera in New York to participate in their 1921-22 season. According to legend (and even a number of contemporary reports) the tenor was being brought in to replace the ailing Enrico Caruso. Based on the repertoire being prepared for Mann that season, including Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt, it would seem that he was simply being brought in to bolster the theater’s German wing. Whether or not Mann had been contracted to take on Caruso’s roles is entirely a moot point. On September 5, 1921 (a month after the death of Caruso), Mann was singing Radames on the stage of the Berlin Staatsoper. At the end of the strenuous second act, the tenor collapsed and lost consciousness. His colleagues, thinking he had merely fainted, carried him offstage and summoned the house doctor. By the time the doctor had reached Mann’s dressing room, the tenor was dead from a massive heart attack. He was just 38 years old. Josef Mann made about fifty gramophone recordings for Pathé and Odeon. These discs reveal a marvelously expressive and musical singer, the possessor of a true dramatic tenor voice of great range and flexibility. The real tragedy is that Mann’s early death robbed him of the opportunity to fully make his mark on the operatic world. It leaves us to only wonder what heights this wonderful tenor might have attained had he been granted another decade…or two.
