Word: varnay
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...little after 7 p.m. when the phone rang. The voice on the other end was breathless: Could Miss Varnay get down to the Metropolitan Opera House at once? Helen Traubel was ill and the Met had to have a new Isolde right away. An hour later, Astrid Varnay, hastily bewigged and costumed, but with no spare time for even a few warm-up scales, was ready to go on stage...
...come to depend on Varnay. In the six years since her Manhattan debut, she has sung more Wagnerian leads than any other Met performer. She is a small woman with grey eyes who likes bad puns, saves box tops and chews bubble gum. Still young (she made her debut at 23) and still slim, as divas go, she strides through each new role like a veteran. Critics have been respectful to her rich voice, have called her performances "creditable," have applauded her plucky last-minute substitute jobs...
...opera season gets off to a fortissimo start in San Francisco this week. The opening Lohengrin will star a new Swedish tenor named Set Svanholm and the Metropolitan Opera's Astrid Varnay. In the orchestra pit will be 47-year-old, parrot-nosed William Steinberg, a favorite conductor of the paladin of all conductors, Arturo Toscanini...
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...
Photographers last week found that Soprano Varnay lived near a poor pushcart section of Manhattan (see cut). In the past year she had sung only in three small town recitals, booked by Columbia Concerts. Last week her managers read Soprano Varnay's press notices-and got busy...