William Zakariasen (August 19, 1930 – September 4, 2004) was an American

opera Opera is a form of History of theatre#European theatre, Western theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by Singing, singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically ...

tic

tenor A tenor is a type of male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the countertenor and baritone voice types. It is the highest male chest voice type. Composers typically write music for this voice in the range from the second B below m ...

and

music critic '' The Oxford Companion to Music'' defines music criticism as "the intellectual activity of formulating judgments on the value and degree of excellence of individual works of music, or whole groups or genres". In this sense, it is a branch of m ...

Biography

Born in

Blue Earth, Minnesota Blue Earth is a city in Faribault County, Minnesota, United States, at the confluence of the east and west branches of the Blue Earth River. The population was 3,174 at the 2020 census. It is the county seat of Faribault County. It is home ...

, Zakariasen began his career as a classical tenor in the late 1950s, appearing in operas and in concerts. He sometimes performed under the name William Saxon. In the early 1970s he moved away from performance into the field of

journalism Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the "news of the day" and that informs society to at least some degree of accuracy. The word, a noun, applies to the journ ...

, establishing himself as a respected

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

-based music critic. In 1976 he became the chief classical-music critic of the ''

New York Daily News The ''Daily News'' is an American newspaper based in Jersey City, New Jersey. It was founded in 1919 by Joseph Medill Patterson in New York City as the ''Illustrated Daily News''. It was the first U.S. daily printed in Tabloid (newspaper format ...

'' where he worked for the next seventeen years. After leaving the ''New York Daily News'' in 1993 he became the classical-music/opera critic for ''The Westsider''/''Chelsea Clinton News'' in 1994. He remained in that position until his death in 2004 in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

. Zakariasen was also a repeat contributor of articles to ''

Opera News ''Opera News'' was an American classical music magazine. It was published from 1936 to 2023 by the Metropolitan Opera Guild—a non-profit organization, located at Lincoln Center, that was founded to promote opera and support the Metropolitan ...

'' magazine and to '' New York Concert Review''.

References

1930 births 2004 deaths American male journalists American music critics American operatic tenors 20th-century American male opera singers People from Blue Earth, Minnesota Singers from Minnesota Classical musicians from Minnesota Journalists from Minnesota 20th-century American journalists 20th-century American male writers 21st-century American journalists 21st-century American male writers {{US-journalist-1930s-stub