Word: marschallin
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...later with the Vienna Opera, where she created several roles for her friend Richard Strauss, and in 1934 with the Metropolitan. Notable among her 100 roles were her yielding Sieglinde in Die Walküre, her devout Elisabeth in Tannhäuser and, most outstanding of all, her matchless Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier. At 62, she reduced a Town Hall audience to tears when she announced her retirement, quoting the Marschallin, who looked at her aging face in the mirror and said: "It is time." In her later years in California she painted, wrote several books, and taught master classes...
...major asset: Bernstein had persuaded Mezzo Christa Ludwig to abandon her accustomed role as the youth Octavian for the lead role of the aging Marschallin, usually sung by a soprano. Ludwig's vocal prowess, womanly softness and pathos proved her a perfect choice. Said Bernstein: "She was so marvelous in the last scene that I cried watching her." And that was no Viennese exaggeration...
...love all those demented old dames of the old operas," she says. "They're loony, but the music's wonderful." The following evening offered Soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, 49, making her belated debut at the Met singing the demanding role of the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier. Blondly radiant, and in sure control of her pure soprano, grown a shade harder over the years, Schwarzkopf proved that her Marschallin is still the most memorable since Lotte Lehmann's in the 1930s...
Though every German soprano worthy of her breastplate has sung the role of the Marschallin in Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, other singers keep a respectful distance. The Marschallin's notes are within easy reach of the best sopranos, but dramatically her role is too restrained for Italians, too aristocratic for Americans, too Viennese for the French. Last week though, a French soprano named Régine Crespin sang the final Marschallin of her first season at the Metropolitan Opera. It was the best at the Met since Lotte Lehmann's swan song 16 years...
Head & Heart. When Crespin made her Met debut last fall, a critical audience was as startled by her temerity as it was pleased by her voice. Lehmann herself-the peerless Marschallin-had returned at 74 to coach the new singer, but Crespin clearly had ideas of her own. "We have met an impasse," Crespin said, then went onstage to offer a compromise interpretation of the role that even Lehmann had to admire. True to her introspective notion of Strauss's aging princess, Crespin sang the first act at fingertip touch, hiding her immense voice behind a melancholy that...