Leonie Rysanek

While most widely known on her behalf Wagner and Strauss, soprano Leonie Rysanek was also significantly admired in the dramatic Verdi tasks, specifically Lady Macbeth. She got a rich, complete tone of voice that could lower through weighty orchestration, but was also with the capacity of good piano performing. Her first profession ambition was theatre, and she was known on her behalf formidable stage and vocal performing, while some critics commented unfavorably on her behalf occasional disruptions from the vocal range and extramusical results to emphasize a dramatic stage. Modestly, she dropped offers from the heaviest Strauss and Wagner such as for example Isolde and Brünnhilde, declaring that Birgit Nilsson’s renditions had been the perfect. (Compare and contrast that towards the feuding of several divas and divos!) Vocally, her middle was a weak spot through the first many years of her profession, though it strengthened as time passes. She studied in the Vienna Conservatory with Alfred Jerger and Rudolf Grossman, and produced her opera debut on the Innsbruck opera in 1949 as Agathe in Weber’s Der Freischütz. Her female yet powerfully-voiced Sieglinde at her Bayreuth Celebration debut in 1951 brought her to globe attention. She produced her Covent Backyard debut throughout a Vienna Condition Opera tour as Danae in Strauss’ Der Liebe der Danae in 1953. Her USA debut is at SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA in 1956 as Senta in Wagner’s The Traveling Dutchman. Her Met debut is at 1959, changing Maria Callas as Verdi’s Female Macbeth, though she was planned to appear later on that time of year as Verdi’s Aida. Though she needed to make an impression on a hostile viewers, she became a Met preferred and for the others of her profession, was a normal there aswell as with Vienna. In 1981, she starred in Götz Friedrich’s film of Elektra, carried out by Karl Bohm and co-starring with Astrid Varnay. In the middle-1980s she started to sing mezzo tasks, marking her 30th wedding anniversary U.S. debut by showing up as the Kostelnicka in Janácek’s Jenufa at SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, and added such tasks as Clytemnestra and Herodias to her repertoire. She retired like a vocalist in 1996 and became chief executive from the Vienna Festival.