Soprano Hildegard Behrens, one of the finest Wagnerian performers of her generation, has died while traveling in Japan. She was 72.
File photo courtesy: bach-cantatas.com (Added by Seniors World Chronicle)
Jonathan Friend, artistic administrator of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, said Tuesday in an e-mail message to opera officials that Behrens felt unwell while traveling to a festival near Tokyo. She went to a Tokyo hospital, where she died of an apparent aneurysm. Friend's e-mail was shared with AP by Jack Mastroianni, director of IMG Artists. Her funeral was planned in Vienna. Organizers for Behrens' Japan visit said she was here to give lessons at the hot-spring resort town of Kusatsu, Gunma Prefecture, from August 21 to 29. The lessons were being sponsored by the Kanshinetsu Music Association. The organizers refused to comment further. A Web site for the Kusatsu Summer Music Festival said Behrens' performances had been canceled, but gave no further details. It said she was to perform Thursday. Behrens was among the finest actors on the opera stage during a professional career that spanned more than three decades. She made her professional stage debut in Freiburg as the Countess in Mozart's "Le Nozze di Figaro" in 1971 and made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Giorgetta in Puccini's "Il Tabarro" in 1976. One of her breakthrough roles came the following year, when she sang the title role in Strauss' "Salome" at the Salzburg Festival in Austria. She gave 171 performances at the Met, where she appeared until 1999. Her breakthrough there came as Leonore in Beethoven's "Fidelio" under conductor Karl Boehm in 1980. She was most acclaimed in the late 1980s and early 1990s for her portrayal of Bruennhilde in the Otto Schenk production of the Ring Cycle, the Met's first televised staging of Wagner's tetralogy. "She is the finest Bruennhilde of the post-Birgit Nilsson era," AP critic Mike Silverman wrote in 1989. "Though she lacks the overpowering vocal resources of a great Wagnerian soprano, she makes up for that with dramatic intensity as she changes before our eyes from a frisky young Valkyrie to a passionate and then betrayed lover, and finally to a compassionate woman whose sacrifice returns the ring to its rightful owners, the Rhinemaidens." She recorded Isolde in Munich in 1981 with conductor Leonard Bernstein and received praise for her Bruennhilde with conductor Georg Solti at the Bayreuth Festival in 1983. Her "Tosca" at the Met, opposite Placido Domingo's Cavaradossi, is preserved on video along with her Met Ring Cycle. According to Behren's official Web site, she was born in the north German town of Varel-Oldenburg. Her parents were both doctors and she and her five siblings studied piano and violin as children. It said she earned a law degree from the University of Freiburg, where she was also in the choir. [rc] (C) The Japan Times Ltd.
