Word: traubel
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...years later, Damrosch called Helen Traubel to New York to sing The Man Without a Country. His opera survived only five performances at the Metropolitan, but Helen Traubel so impressed NBC officials that they offered her a $10,000 contract. Traubel soon decided that she liked neither the music she had to sing nor the way she had to sing it, and tore up the contract...
...house in Greenwich Village she met William Bass, a cheerful and rotund New Yorker who is now her business adviser. Both were already married,† but they got divorces and were married by the Mayor of Weehawken, N.J. in October 1938. Then came the hardest times of Helen Traubel's life. She and Bill were broke. In a dark two-room West syth Street apartment near Carnegie Hall they cooked occasional lamb stews, sometimes had to scrape up money for food by cashing in on their empty milk and soda-pop bottles. They visited the Central Park...
Change in Regime. One Sunday afternoon in 1939, just after her first recital in Manhattan's Town Hall, Traubel sang the Immolation Scene from Göterdämerung with the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York. She was quickly offered a Metropolitan contract; this time she was ready. In her Met debut as Sieglinde in Die Walküe, Flagstad sang Brünnhilde and Lauritz Melchior Siegmund. Traubel's opulent tones sent critics away raving. Said the New York Times: "The voice is a glorious one." After an Ann Arbor concert, a reviewer...
...years Traubel and Flagstad divided most of the leading Wagnerian roles. In Die Walküre, Traubel sang a dozen Sieglindes to Flagstad's Brünnhildes. The usually aloof Flagstad finally said to Traubel: "I think it is now time we turn this around and I sing Sieglinde and you sing Brünnhilde." The change never came off. Shortly afterwards Flagstad returned to German-occupied Norway...
...change of prima donnas changed the Met's backstage atmosphere. When she wasn't on stage, Flagstad had knitted quietly in the wings, avoided visitors. Traubel opened the door of her dingy little dressing room to anyone who could crowd inside. Her laughter boomed so lustily that stage managers feared it could be heard in the auditorium. In the old horse-&-buggy era, Wagnerian divas like Johanna Gadski and Lillian Nordica had expected even the stagehands to wait on them. Traubel insists on putting on her own makeup, wig and costumes, because "being dependent is a luxury...