Tappy, Eric
Tappy, Eric
Tappy, Eric, Swiss tenor; b. Lausanne, May 19, 1931. He studied with Fernando Carpi at the Geneva Cons. (1951-58), Ernst Reichert at the Salzburg Mozarteum, Eva Liebenberg in Hilversum, and Boulanger in Paris. In 1959 he made his concert debut as the Evangelist in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in Strasbourg. His operatic stage debut followed in 1964 as Rameau’s Zoroastre at the Paris Opéra-Comique. After singing in Geneva (1966) and Hannover (1967), he made his debut at London’s Covent Garden as Mozart’s Tito in 1974. He made his U.S. debut in 1974 as Don Ottavio at the San Francisco Opera, where he returned to sing Poppea and Idomeneo in 1977-78. In 1980 he appeared as Tito in Rome. He retired in 1982. Tappy was esteemed for the extraordinary range of his concert and operatic repertoire, which ranged from early music to the avant-garde.
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire