Dramatic soprano duet: Kirsten Flagstad & Astrid Varnay in Die Walküre
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- Опубликовано: 23 июл 2024
- Part 2 of the dramatic soprano duet series. I'm surprised this scene hasn't been posted before since it is so popular, I also added a score this time. Might be one of the best versions of this out there (although I think it would have fit better with the roles reversed...)
0:00 Nicht sehre dich Sorge um mich
2:49 Fort denn eile
4:04 O hehrstes Wunder
Brünnhilde - Kirsten Flagstad
Sieglinde - Astrid Varnay
Valkyries:
Gerhilde - Thelma Votipka
Grimgerde - Martha Lipton
Helmwige - Regina Resnik
Ortlinde - Irene Jessner
Rossweisse - Lucielle Browning
Schwertleite - Jean Madeira
Siegrune - Hertha Glaz
Waltraute - Jeanne Palmer
Conductor - Fritz Stiedry
Music - Richard Wagner
February 3, 1951.
These women function at the highest level of strength, beauty, accuracy in pitch, and commitment to bringing the drama alive.
The voices of course are stunning. What I find marvelous is Stiedry's conducting. The tempo he is using is quite a bit faster than most other conductors to my ears and this enhances the very powerful dramatic emotions of the duet interaction. Perhaps it was the fact that the singers could handle tempo.
That glorious Varnay was about to amaze the world as Brünnhilde in Bayreuth.
Thank you for this!
Astrid Varnay has a very heavy, gorgeous voice with colour of mistical darkness. Flagstad's voice is lighter, but also it's very strong and beautiful.
Es bastante dudoso decir que la voz de Flagstad es más ligera, si un color más suave pero no más ligero.
@@dramaticsoprano5168 To me (and I am actually 'recovering' from hearing this) it is the intense piercing human suffering of Varnay, and the poised noble golden outpouring of Flagstad . . . surely Wagner dreamt of something like this?
I think the most accurate way of putting this point is that Flagstad was a genuine dramatic soprano while Varnay was a mezzo soprano who somehow found a technique that allowed her to sing that repertory.
There has never been a greater Wagner singer than Flagstad...
True that, and their never will be. Along with Melchior, in this respect, she will reign supreme forever. Their singing was not about just size of voice alone, for which they would be considered undeniably great , but it was about their abilities of communicating meaning and emotions through music with their great and beautiful voices. I've heard many singers and a very, very few knew the secret of doing this, let alone, were able to do it and do it well and memorably. Anyone can be taught to draw and paint but no one can be taught to be an artist: Flagstad and Melchior were very fine artists.
Yes. There has been Astrid Varnay.
OMG Vranay is just so incredibly emotional and passionate - it is really unbelievable. She is in absolute stunning form here. And for me to say that is a lot because for me Rysanek topped everyone in the role. But listening to this changed that ball game completely. Flagstad is a very feminine Bünnhilde, slightly reserved next to Varnay but it is a beautiful and unusual pairing. At 3:56 She sings SIEGFRIED so meltingly as if she already knows he will become her lover and then crescendos to an heroic SIeg in "erfreut sich der SIEG". Brilliant!!!
Thanks. They were friends. Flagstad once worked for Varnay's father when he ran an opera company. Cheers.
Just lovely…😍
They could easily change roles for a warmer sounding Sieglinde and a darker Brünnhilde.
Absolutely thrilling!
There is no doubt that these Kirsten Flagstad as Brünnhilde and Astrid Varnay as Sieglinde, especially the latter since this was her operatic debut at only 23 years old, rocked the old Metropolitan Opera House. However, my personal Sieglinde/Brünnhilde combination was from 1954 in Bayreuth with Martha Mödl as Sieglinde and Astrid Varnay as Brünnhilde, with special laudability directed at Birgit Nilsson singing Ortlinde.
This is not from Varnay’s debut performance (1941) which I believe she sang across Helen Traubel as Brünnhilde. It is about 10 years later, she was 32/33 while Flagstad was 55/56.
@@dramaticsoprano5168 Ah, thanks for the clarification. I kind of had the Brünnhildes mixed up. Now that you mentioned it, the early 1950s was around the time Varnay sang more Brünnhildes than Sieglindes, although she alternated between these two roles.
@@operaanimelover369 They alternated the roles in this season as well. Sadly, only this short recording exists with the roles reversed: ruclips.net/video/BTv0zdslzFw/видео.html
Thanks for sharing this. Love it. Flagstad was simply unbelievable. Love Astrid, also.
I love them both.
Bravi tutti.
Thank you for the video!
❤❤
Incredible!
I'm so excited with this recording I didn't know it existed I'll probably need additional pills for a good sleep
I saw Varnay in one of her final Met roles, but at least I had that opportunity! I’m way too young to have seen Flagstad, but from recordings, she is the Mount Everest of Wagner sopranos. Obviously, Nilsson is way up there as well (and I saw her onstage as Elektra and the Farberin). Not quite in the same league, but still high in my esteem, I saw Jones as Brunnhilde together with Behrens’s Sieglinde.
How would you compare Varnay live with the other great Wagnerian/dramatic sopranos?
@@dramaticsoprano5168 By the time I saw Varnay onstage, she was no longer the heroic soprano of Brunnhilde and Elektra that we praise today. She appeared as Begbick (Mahagonny) and Mama Lucia (Cav). So I really can’t make a comparison to her glory days or to other cherished singers.
OMG ! They sang together ?!?!?!?
Yes, I believe there is two recordings. They alternated Sieglinde and Brünnhilde in 1951 at the Met. Sadly, this particular scene doesn’t exist with the roles reversed which I think would have been even better here.
Oh and also Regina Resnik was one of the valkyries here, another notable singer in her own right.
@@dramaticsoprano5168 It's fascinating to me that Resnik sings Helmwige here, the one Valkyrie whose tessitura is so high that it was often assigned to leggeros in ages past. This gives the lie to the contention that Resnik was always, like Dernesch, a mezzo masquerading as a soprano. She was definitely a soprano whose voice deepened and lowered over time.
Flagstad and Varnay are in tremendous voce here...glorious!
@@jasonhurd4379 Eh, I don't know. If you listen to some of her soprano recordings of Butterfly her voice is HEAVY in the middle. It's possible she was an in-betweener when young and her musculature hadn't fully ossified. But yeah, by her mid-thirties she was definitely a mezzo, and a rather low one at that. A real unusual voice.
Sans pareil
In 1951 Flagstad was 56 years old. Varnay was 33, but she sounds older than Flagstad. Flagstad wisely waited until her late thirties to take on Wagner's dramatic roles. Varnay jumped right into them at age 23. Result? A quick-aged voice that became dark and ponderous. Listen to her young, clear, beautiful soprano voice in her Met debut performance as Sieglinde in 1941. She was superb, and barely recognizable as the same singer. In later years she stuck to character roles where her acting ability made up for a worn-out voice.
Yes, but Varnay owned Brunnhilde at Bayreuth for the entirety of the 1950s. Not too bad!
Varnay just had a different voice than Flagstad. Definitely not a worn-out voice