Monday, September 04, 2006

I think we're all getting a little tired of these.

You'll have read elsewhere by now that Astrid Varnay has died at age 88. A singer I was just discovering, oddly, but a name the people who taught me opera always invoked with great respect. Someone else with solid cred calls her memoirs "one of the few modern singer's bios worth reading." I do think I'll read them. Varnay was the sort of go-for-broke singer whose vocalism is an athletic act; on most lists, one of the great Wagneriennes of the last century though the last of her performances I listened to (with the Wellsungs) was an Elektra. The role was on its way out of her voice but through towering self-assurance and a primal sense for all the triumph and tragedy of Sophocles and Hoffmansthal, she pulled it off. Now can we please take a long break from this funeral procession of vocal eminences?

4 comments:

Maury D'annato said...

Her Siegfried Brunnhilde is pretty gripping. I know what you mean about hojotohooooYIP, though. It's like matzoh balls: some people like them fluffy and others heavy. I prefer the hojotoho to go up to a solid, held note but it's a matter of taste. Check out the Sieg/Brun on Parterre. (Me, I've never been able to tolerate Dutchman much.)

She was also a fascinating looking woman.

Anonymous said...

And add to the list Leopold Simoneau, whose death I wouldn't have known about had it not been for the sidebar on The Standing Room. Enough. Basta così.

Princess Alpenrose said...

I totally agree! Ich habe genug.

Maury D'annato said...

Duly noted about Simoneau. Not, perhaps, a titan but a worthy artist, vocally a gentelman. Like a lot of other people, apparently, I kind of assumed he died years ago. Listening to him and Dermota, a baker's dozen years ago, I got my imprint of how Mozart tenoring should sound. (Thank goodness this is a category we are not now bankrupt in, as opposed to Varnay's, really.)