For many, Jon Vickers’s signature achievement was in the title role of Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes, which the tenor saw as study in the ‘psychology of human rejection.’METROPOLITAN OPERA/The New York Times
Before Jon Vickers became a great opera star, before he became an outstanding pupil at Toronto's Royal Conservatory of Music, before he was discovered and mentored by Mary Morrison and a United Church organist in Winnipeg, he was a star in Flin Flon, that mining town with the quirky name in northern Manitoba.
Jon Vickers, born in 1926, came to Flin Flon as a young man and worked as an assistant manager in Woolworth's. It was not long before his wonderful singing voice was discovered and he became a lead in a local Gilbert and Sullivan production.
It was on Feb. 12, 1947, that my very ephemeral claim to musical fame occurred. I was on the same musical program with Jon Vickers. First United Lutheran Church held a variety concert, tickets 50 cents. A program lists my contribution along with three local music teachers in a two-piano, eight-hand piano performance. Jon Vickers then sang a solo, and the effect on the audience was electric.
Never was 50 cents so well spent.
In 1984, my husband and I saw him in a Toronto production of Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes. The sheer glory of that voice was unforgettable as he sang of hope, rejection and man's inhumanity to man. Later we again heard him sing, this time in an afternoon recital. His final encore will remain with us always – a gentle, lyrical singing of Danny Boy.
I am sure everyone's eyes misted over as that beautiful sound enwrapped us. I know mine did and do now when I think of that afternoon.
– Arlie Freer, Bracebridge, Ont.
For the CBC Light Opera Group's production of The Yeomen of the Guard in Toronto in June, 1953, actors were engaged to speak the characters' lines, so I was cast to play the leading role of Colonel Fairfax.
The young tenor singing the role was an unknown from Toronto's Royal Conservatory.
As our rehearsal got under way at a little church, the blending of the actors with the singers was working well until I delivered my opening lines and then I supposedly started to sing; the tenor opened his mouth and the most incredibly beautiful and powerful voice froze us in our tracks.
I swear the roof of the church shook. Jon Vickers stole the show.
My next meeting with Mr. Vickers was in the mid-1960s, when I was a film director at the National Film Board. He was in great demand internationally by then, so I suggested making him the subject of a documentary.
I went to sound him out in New York, where he was singing at the Metropolitan Opera. But he turned down the idea. He was unhappy about being underappreciated in Canada.
His ambivalence about things Canadian stayed with him for most of his life.
His great operatic performances will live on.
– Richard Gilbert, film director, producer, Toronto