Cassilly, Richard
Cassilly, Richard
American tenor; b. Washington, D.C., Dec. 14, 1927; d. Boston, Jan. 30, 1998. He studied at the Peabody Cons, of Music in Baltimore. After singing Michele in Menotti’s The Saint of Bleecker Street in N.Y. (1955), he made his N.Y.C. Opera debut as Vakula in Tchaikovsky’s The Golden Slippers (Oct. 13, 1955); was on its roster until 1959, and again from 1960 to 1963 and from 1964 to 1966. He made his European debut in Sutermeister’s Raskolnikoff in Geneva (1965) and that same year sang at the Hamburg State Opera, where he appeared regularly (1966–77). He was concurrently a member of London’s Covent Garden (1968–78) and also sang in major European opera centers. He made his Metropolitan Opera debut in N.Y. as Radames on Jan. 20, 1973. He resumed his association with the Metropolitan Opera in 1978, and subsequently appeared there in such roles as Tannháuser, Don José, Tristan, Samson, Otello, Jimmy Mahoney in Mahagonny, and Captain Vere in Billy Budd. From 1986 he was prof, of voice at Boston Univ.
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire