GUN KRONZELL-MOULTON

The life and career of Gun Kronzell - Moulton

Gun Kronzell-Moulton

 

*06.07.1930  †06.04.2011

 

was born in Kalmar, Sweden on July 6^th 1930. Early on, my mother showed in passionate interest in music. She played the main part in the school play about “The Smallest Little Santa” and danced ballet to the sounds of “The Blue Danube Waltz”.

The family vacations in San Remo, Nice and Monte Carlo were memorable, but the visits to Stockholm, though, were the start of her love affair with opera. Here, she could share her love of music with her father. It was at this point that she really started to adore what happened on the opera stage. She and her family would travel to Stockholm in order to see the greatest stars sing. She and her very witty father Knut would be riveted, while her brother and mother found it witty that the singers died at the end and then went to thank for the applause. Soon enough, Gun Margareta Kronzell knew what she wanted to achieve: becoming a singer.

She now had solos in local concerts. This lead to singing studies for Ernst Reichert in Salzburg as well as the legendary Russian singer Madame Skilonsz in Stockholm after her debut as a singer in 1949 in the Cathedral of Kalmar. Ragnar Hultén tried to force upon her a vibrant volume of the voice; nevertheless Skilonsz truly perfected her technique. Sebastian Peschko worked meticulously on every single consonant and vowel. She became an expert.

Her first capital dwelling was in the French Dominican Abbey for Nuns in Stockholm. It was there she discovered her love for Gregorian Music. She then moved to a tiny apartment in Stockholm’s old city to study day and night at the Royal Music Academy, where she spent her formative years and worked with many a later famous singer. She sang in the opera with people like Jussi Björling, toured Europe with Eric Ericsson’s famous choir and sang the solo alto and soprano parts in oratories. Lasse Lönndahl was the operetta tenor turned famous pop star at this time and he was her colleague in Stockholm.

She sang Elisabeth in Tannhäuser as well as the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro during the Academy years, something that would prepare her for the countless opera roles she would conquer in her lifetime.

           In 1952, my mother spent three months studying in Salzburg and lived in the centre of town. She here met Bishop Bonifaz Madersbacher at the side entrance of the City Dome and this companionship would become the most important of her life. They would correspond and write letters to each other every time she felt dire about anything. Even when he moved to Bolivia and founded a Christian congregation there, he would answer her questions truthfully and eloquently. Bishop Bonifaz remained her most valued friend her entire life.

           As soon as she was awarded Norway’s Rudd Foundation Scholarship by Kirsten Flagstad, she moved to Wiesbaden and studied for the legendary pedagogue Paul Lohmann. He had lost an arm in the war, but his skills as a singer gave him the greatest flexibility. He would work with her meticulously on every note and every single letter of the alphabet.

           Gun Kronzell worked at the opera of Wiesbaden and launched a great career. From here on, she moved to Bielefeld and still speaks of this place as her greatest career experience. She here got to sing the greatest roles: Dorabella, Asucena, Abigail, Eboli and Santuzza. She in actuality got into her own as a prominent character-actress and brilliant mezzo-soprano. The media discovered her talents and she began attaining truly first-class critiques. She also had a great deal of success singing oratories and concert music, among other in London Festival Hall and in the Vienna Stephan’s Cathedral. Working simultaneously at a home for mentally ill children was a wonderful change. The children gave her the reality check she needed.

           After that came engagements, among others in Augsburg, Paris, London, Recklinghausen, Köln, Essen, Lübeck, Berlin and Regensburg. Her great reviews became well-known and people spoke of Gun Kronzell as one of the fresh principal mezzos of Germany. The amazing thing was her range: she sang in all registers. The famous opera singer James King, when hearing her voice, burst out: “Jesus Christ, what a voice!”

           Hannover was a bright professional position for her. From here she guested all over the country. By now she had sung and would sing most of the great roles: Erda in Rheingold, Kundry in Parsifal, Ortrud in Lohingrin, Brünhilde in The Ring, Adriano in Rienzi, Brangaene in Tristan und Isolde, Emilia in Othello, Eboli in Don Carlos, Dame Quickly in Falstaff, Abigaille in Nabucco, Czipra in Zigeunerbaron, The Innkeeper in Boris Gudonov, Chiwria in The Fair at Sorotchinzk, Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana, Asucena in Trovatore, the mother in Hänsel and Gretel, Orpheo in Orpheo ed Euridice, the leading part in Antigone, Ludmilla in The Bartered Bride, The Countess and Madelon in Andrea Chenier, The Old Woman in Die Doppelgängerin, Begonia in Der Junge Lord and Ulrica in A Masked Ball.

           To this was added a wide range of recitals and church concerts and a huge repertoire of almost any composer imaginable. She became a vast Bach-specialist. All of the Bach oratories were sung in most of the continental cathedrals. Furthermore, Gun Kronzell’s knowledge of Brahms, Copland and Gershwin was astounding. Her fantastic interpretation of songs like “Did they shut me out of heaven, did I sing too loud?” or “My Man’s Gone Now” was a feast for the ears.

           1966 was a pivotal year. She studied for a teacher named Köhler and here met a young baritone named Herbert Eyre Moulton, who recently had moved to Germany from Dublin. She found it fascinating that he always took off his shoes when he sang. They met by chance at the post office and my mother asked him if he would talk English with her. My father’s joke was that he, after that, never shut up. That was typical for my father’s sense of humour.

           They married in Bad Godersberg in 1966. Exceedingly fast, they began singing together and forming a successful team. My father taught my mother everything he knew about musical comedy. Together, they performed in the Hannover Opera House in operas such as Der Rosenkavalier and Zar und Zimmermann. Their long collaboration as The Singing Couple brought them not only European tours, but also concerts in the United States.

In Ireland, my parents performed on Irish television in a talk show between a Russian spy and a prize winning cow. I was conceived during this tour. I must’ve heard a great deal of music during my mother’s pregnancy. My parents moved to Graz, where my dad worked as an actor and a teacher. My mom worked at the opera and had to take mother’s leave simultaneously with another colleague. This other colleague had a child simultaneously with my mother. I ended up working with him 32 years later in Bad Hersfeld.

I have always been prone to eccentricity. I was born close to brewery in Graz and opposite gay couple with chickens in their yard. She was on constantly on stage. She sang for the Swedish King in 1970, but also came late for a concert because of a royal entourage of Her Majesty the Queen of England. She was royal in her artistry.

I do recall the next stop, Mödling, and my babysitter Tante Wolff with her apple strudel. I recall her German Shepherd at whom she would always shout “Schnaps!”

           My mother sang at the Volksoper in Vienna, among others a world premiere of Salmhofer’s “Dreikönig”, where she received rave reviews.

In Sweden, she started working as a Gothenburg Music Academy singing teacher in 1974. Her work at the opera also included Ulrica in Verdi’s A Masked Ball in Swedish, which she had already sung in Italian in Hannover.

           Their performance in Osage, Iowa in 1976 was my first family concert experience. For the encore, I wandered up on stage and sang with in “Wien, Wien, Nur Du Allein”.

From 1979 on, she freelanced. In retrospect, it was admirable how my parents would keep us financially above water. My mother’s inventiveness was astounding. She wrote, directed and starred in a play called “Long Live the Trolls”. This was my first acting experience. She even toured with famous comedians in Swedish schools. I was her colleague at that time during my second production. She taught organists how to sing in Oskarshamn and held church music seminars. She taught private and official speech and vocal classes in a variety of schools and even taught Chinese immigrants Swedish and Stena Line Disc Jockeys how to articulate well into a microphone. She played the Goddess Justitia in a communist play about the fall of capitalism. My father and I, being true monarchists like my mother was, were a bit bothered. Prime Minister Olof Palme, who was murdered a few years later, came to watch and we were the only one not standing up when the audience sang the socialist songs. We knew the truth, though: my mother, like all actors, did it for the experience

           Her extensive concert experience brought her good reviews and her work for the Gothenburg Ballet Academy gave her wide-ranging attention from the press. She started to come into her own as a singing teacher. Her broad knowledge from various teachers now gave her expertise how to teach every imaginable style. Sebastian Peschko had taught her how to enunciate the alphabet. Paul Lohmann gave her a smooth legato. Köhler widened her range. Now she could use speech exercises such as Myavabranya, Pradgaflaspya and Yakaganga to perfect her student’s consonants.

It was exactly this experience that brought her the offering of three professorships at once. Tucson, Arizona and Graz, Austria had wanted her, but the lure of the engagement in Vienna was too strong. The teaching try-out here was also the best of all of her auditions. By 1984, she had already auditioned in two Austrian cities for a professorship and applied in three American cities. Vienna won the personal award and so the family moved there. This was the start of a 26 year stay in the city where she sang over 300 concerts and taught students that eventually would work with the likes of Pavarotti. Her students would eventually end up singing at the Vienna State Opera, in Bern, Zurich, Cairo, St. Petersburg, Malmö, London, New York, Örebro, Växjö, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Gelsenkirchen and Stockholm.

Her student Judith was Luciano Pavarotti’s personal assistant for eight years. This gave us all intimate contact with the master and free tickets for many of his galas. Many opera stars like June Andersson, Nicolai Gedda, Claudio Abbado, Ricardo Muti, Per Grundén and Ingvar Wixell became acquaintances of ours through Luciano, if they hadn’t been so before. Gedda was an old friend of my parents from when my dad had worked in Ireland. When we met him again in Vienna in the 1980’s he told my father: “We are older today, but we are still gorgeous.” Gedda was kind enough to train a tenor student of my mother’s for free before he left Vienna as a service of gratitude to my mother.

           My mother’s wide experience made her arrange numerous appearances for her students in such diverse places as Bamberg, Germany, Langentzersdorf, Austria and Kalmar, Sweden. Three Croatians became the charity centre of media attention in Sweden and so my mother became what she had been for a long time: a charity organization.

           In 1998, she retired from the academy, but kept on performing actively until and after she moved to Gelsenkirchen in 2010 closer to her son and his lovely family (!). She had taken care of my father so well until he died in 2005. Now, I could take care of her. She had seen us so often from a distance, so now it was time to live close to us herself. What a better way to crown a glorious career than to follow her son’s career up close and personal in his own theatre? Every day provided a new gathering. She saw me in my biggest Gelsenkirchen role yet: Sam in Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti and marvel at how fast I ran down the stairs and at the clearness of my lyrics.

She also planned on auditioning her Brünhilde for our theatre superintendent.

           My mother had a glorious career and her personality was wide open and full of love.

           She passed away on April 6^th 2011.

           Her soul is free.