![]() ![]() The recordings on this CD are from a few radio performances in 1949 at Radio Alger while others are private recordings one year later plus a recital of French mélodies for German radio in 1951 so at the real end of Faniard’s career though it is difficult to hear a marked vocal decline. I too well know there is no love lost nowadays in Belgium between Flemings and Walloons and it is somewhat politically difficult for a series called “Musique en Wallonie” to publish Dutch songs but still it is a loss for the listener. After the war he became a Frenchman and he died in Paris in 1955.įaniard’s only commercial record consists of two Flemish songs and I highly regret they are not on this CD as after all they show the younger singer. During the war he often returned to his mother country, mostly singing his German roles in Dutch in Antwerp. An Italian début in Parma however was a failure. When not in Paris he sang at the big French theatres or in the French colonies always in French and often in roles from the German repertoire. He would sing there on and off untill 1951. ![]() He soon went to France and made his début at the Palais Garnier in 1930. Six years later, after having restudied his voice, he became a heroic tenor singing at the Antwerp French Opera (that would disappear forever due to the economic crisis, leaving the field to the Dutch speaking Royal Flemish opera). He had a promising baritone voice and made his début at De Munt in 1920. Fernand Smeets was born in 1894 in Sint-Joost-ten-Node, a Brussels suburb at the time mainly speaking Dutch which was Smeets’ mother language. It is a painstakingly fine transfer of radio broadcasts that have been circulating for many years on cassette and on cd-r. To be honest, I fear this admirable issue is not going to make a lasting impression on vocal buffs due to the unrepresentative repertoire.
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