Albert Reiss by Aime Dupont

ALBERT REISS
(22 February 1870 – 19 June 1940)
German Tenor
Began his career as an actor . He proceeded to study singing with Wilhelm Vilmar and later Julius Lieben and Benno Stolzenberg. He made his professional operatic debut in 1897 as Peter Ivanov in Lortzing's Zar und Zimmermann at Königsberg. The following year he joined the opera house at Posen where he sang roles for only one season. In 1899 he began performing at the Wiesbaden Opera House where he performed roles until the fall of 1901 when he left to join the roster at the Metropolitan Opera.
His first performance with the company was in Toronto on 12 October as Remendado in Bizet's Carmen. He made his first appearance at the company's house in New York City on December 23, 1901 as both the Shepherd and the Steersman in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. This was the beginning of a long association with the Met for Reiss, who appeared with the company every year for the next eighteen years in mostly tenor buffo roles. Most notably he sang in several world premiers with the company including: Nick in Puccini's La fanciulla del West, the Broom-maker in Humperdinck's Königskinder, Nial in Horatio Parker's Mona, the offstage male lover in Puccini's Il Tabarro, Richard II of England in Reginald de Koven's The Canterbury Pilgrims and Ragueneau in Walter Damrosch's Cyrano. His farewell performance on 14 April 1919 - again as Remendado - was his 1,070th performance with the company.