Word: silja
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...titular heroine, sexy Soprano Anja Silja was in rare form, her powerful, dramatic voice fully under control. Tenor William Lewis, the narcissistic lover Sergei, was preening and selfabsorbed, his voice strong and true. Most impressive of all was Conductor Calvin Simmons, 31, who threw himself into the music with the single-minded intensity it requires, fanning the opera's central fires to white-hot incandescence...
...most of her operatic career, Berlin-born Soprano Anja Silja, 27, got better coverage in German tabloids and picture magazines than in the critical columns. It was easy to see why. Her breezy, bohemian style of life made good copy, especially with photos of her in miniskirt or sleek red Jaguar. Lately, Anja Silja has been making musical headlines as well, and is now hailed as Europe's fastest-rising prima donna...
...rounded off a series of three appearances in a production of La Traviata created for her at the Frankfurt Opera. It was a lusty performance that emphasized the low-life origins of the heroine (who in the Dumas novel went from waif to courtesan to wreck within eight years). Silja contributed considerably to that characterization with a tense, far-ranging voice (31 octaves) and a spectacular stage presence that can flash with the music's mood from tigress to tragedienne. The ultimate tribute to the Silja Traviata was apparent immediately after each performance; at the Frankfurt Opera Restaurant young...
Overriding Tradition. Silja's life story would make an operatic libretto in itself. The illegitimate child of a Finnish actor and a German actress, she was raised by her grandfather, an unconventional dabbler in voice and piano coaching, fiction, painting and sculpture. He trained her himself, and launched her at twelve on a concert tour. When she was 16, he allowed her to begin her apprenticeship in opera...
Distracter. Under Wieland's tutelage, Silja appeared in 33 productions. Still, as long as she played Galatea to Wieland's Pygmalion, many listeners regarded her as an extension of her mentor. Now, however, she is making it handsomely on her own-but not at Bayreuth. Soon after Wieland's death in 1966, his widow fired Anja on the grounds that her miniskirts were "distracting the personnel...