Word: astride
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Belgians still blame the King for his 1940 surrender, but many blame him for not encouraging resistance. Still others resent his second marriage after the death (in a car he was driving) of popular, Swedish-born Queen Astrid. To all these Belgians, a regency for Astrid's handsome son, Prince Baudouin, 14, looked good. The next few weeks would tell whether the stewardship of the Government in Exile looked equally good...
...most unknown singers the chance never comes in a lifetime. But it came to short, plump-cheeked, 23-year-old Astrid Varnay-the chance to stride the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in a big part. Soprano Lotte Lehmann fell ill, Soprano Varnay donned the blond wig and nightie of Sieglinde in Wagner's Die Walküre. Though she had never appeared on any stage, she sang that hapless housewife's role with such easy assurance that critics all but ho-yo-to-hoed...
That happened a fortnight ago. Last week an even bigger part fell vacant -Die Walküre's Brünnhilde. Helen Traubel, herself pinch-hitting for Kirsten Flagstad (immured in Norway for the duration), took cold. Astrid Varnay found herself dressed up again ; this time in a red wig, a hand-me-down cuirass and tunic of one of the Valkyrie maids, a man's heavy helmet. Again the debutasters were amazed...
Soprano Flagstad was partly responsible. Years ago, when she sang an audition in Oslo, a baby cried in the next room. It was Astrid Varnay. Flagstad made friends with the elder Varnays, a coloratura soprano and a stage director at the Stockholm Royal Opera. Soon the Varnays moved to the U.S. When Flagstad followed, she learned that Astrid had a voice and sent her to her own teacher, Hermann Weigert...
...Belgian Princess Marie-Jose. Standing in the Pauline Chapel of the royal palace during the ceremony was another glamor boy, a little gloomy, but slightly angelic with the light catching his golden hair. He was Leopold III, Crown Prince of the Belgians, already married three years to Swedish Princess Astrid...