Agnes Baltsa

While Baltsa’s tone of voice had its complex flaws, particularly a occasionally hollow middle register, she had a stage existence somewhat similar to Callas, a feeling of open fire and energy, that on her behalf admirers a lot more than made up for all those. While a von Karajan protégé, she didn’t allow him persuade her to sing the excessively heavy roles such as for example Kundry that he provided her, and through the 1970s and 1980s was one of the predominant lyric mezzos within the worldwide operatic picture, with the casual carefully prepared foray, as her tone of voice matured, into heavier tasks such as for example Carmen, Dalila, Santuzza, and also Eboli in Verdi’s Don Carlo. As a kid she demonstrated musical guarantee (when she was simply eight she attempted her hands at composing) so when she was 14, her family members shifted to Athens to permit her to wait in the Conservatoire. In 1965 she graduated and earned the Maria Callas Scholarship or grant, which allow her additional her research in Munich. In 1968, she produced her opera debut as Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro in Frankfurt, and in 1970 made an appearance in the Vienna Condition Opera as Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier. She produced her USA debut in 1971 as Carmen in the Houston Grand Opera. She 1st performed with von Karajan in 1974, and he offered her many prominent tasks in his productions within the arriving years, like the popular 1977 Salome (as Herodias) and 1979 Salzburg Don Carlo. (In 1986, their different sights of operatic play resulted in a parting from the methods, patched up just in 1988, quickly before his loss of life.) In 1976, she produced her debut at La Scala as Dorabella, producing her Covent Backyard and Paris Opera debuts afterwards that same calendar year as Cherubino. Her assertive Rosina within the documenting of Il Barbiere di Siviglia on Philips (411 058-2) is a superb exemplory case of her style.