Word: traubel
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Nobody complained when Opera Diva Helen Traubel sang at Nashville's Grand Ole Opry. But James Brown, the king of soul, at the shrine of country music? Well, that is noncountry royalty of a different kind, on account of all the king's funky songs. Insisted Pianist Del Wood, one of a pride of Opry regulars protesting
...quarter-century he was in constant demand in the world's great opera halls, sharing the stage with such stellar Wagnerian sopranos as Kirsten Flagstad, Frida Leider, Maria Miüller and Helen Traubel. Despite his rigorous schedule, Melchior never canceled a performance, something of a landmark for temperamental opera stars. Once while he was in Götterdämmerung he developed a swollen polyp that choked him; he found that by holding his head to one side he could sing-and sing he did for three hours...
Died. Helen Traubel, 69, the Metropolitan Opera's dominant Wagnerian soprano of the 1940s and '50s; following a heart attack; in Santa Monica, Calif. A buxom woman with a gigantic voice, the St. Louis-born singer was the first fully American-trained soprano to play Isolde and the three Brünnhildes at the Met. Many critics considered her superior to her rival, Kirsten Flagstad. Independent and unstuffy, she was dropped by Met Manager Rudolf Bing for singing in nightclubs. She withdrew to care for her ailing husband and former business manager, William Bass...
...rich lower range, found the field so overcrowded that even her widely recognized abilities were not taking her to the top. "I was just a talented youngster compared with the great divas of the time," she says. "I sang the second Elsa to Flagstad, the second Sieglinde to Traubel, and the second everything to Milanov...
...protect the prestige of the Met name, Bing dropped Soprano Helen Traubel for "singing in smoky nightclubs" and Baritone Robert Merrill for taking leave to make a class-C movie, Aaron Slick from Punkin Crik (Merrill was reinstated a year later after making a public apology: "I have learned my lesson"). That lesson was clear: the wiry Mr. Bing was no man to tangle with. One Met dowager, who like most of the oldtimers was eying the new manager with suspicion, had to learn the hard way. "From what I hear," she airily informed him one night...