Licia Albanese: A Small Tribute to a Legend

Licia Albanese has died. It was inevitable, yet still somehow unexpected, as though she would live forever. I had always been a moderate fan of this lady's, but some years ago I heard a performance I'd previously only heard about, the 1956 Manon Lescaut broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera featuring Albanese & Bjoerling in the leading roles, with Dimitri Mitropolous at the helm. I'm here putting down the notes I made from that experience.

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My jaw still hasn’t recovered from hitting the floor. How crazy was this performance??!! It was completely insane.

Albanese sounded a thousand years old - yet really, really hot . . . juicy, even. And her high notes? They blasted out like velvet bullets. Whenever someone speaks about how to "act with the voice" - Albanese is PRECISELY what they're talking about. The emotive skills of both of these singers, is mind boggling . . . huge. Of course I knew this already from their studio recording, and though I’d always heard of this '56 performance, and white hot” it was, I had no idea . . . no idea.

Both Jussi and Licia give such over the top performances that if they were singing these roles today, some would (sadly) laugh at the hysterical, over-emotive “in your face” performances. Then again, maybe not, when the actual singing is of this high quality. Bjoerling’s performance here tops his studio effort for the fact you get the sense he really is living the role. And his top notes (low notes . . . and all notes in between) are spun out with such vocal glory that not only are his excesses forgivable, they’re necessary . . . welcome and thrilling.

Sadly the orchestra (under my man Mitropolous) often sounds bad, undernourished and under rehearsed, and I have to put it on the conductor as I’ve heard the orchestra from that season sound quite fine. (Nobody shoot me please, I can't believe I'm saying that about a man I consider a god). But D.M. pays wonderful attention to his singers and that pay off was worth its weight in gold.

Albanese’s Sola perduta, abbandonata was one of the wildest versions of any aria I’ve ever heard – certainly of this aria, and I mean by about 1000 percent. Shrieking and sobbing and shouting and sobbing and gasping (and sobbing some more) sometimes, remarkably, in the middle of the notes of a phrase. Who else could do this like her? Sometimes she seems even to do this in the middle of a note – it’s madness . . . pure FILTH! Delicious filth. And the notes . . . Oh. My. God. Simply unbelievable. She hurls them out with such force I believe they were very likely heard on Mars. I had to both laugh and cry as she finished the aria punctuated with sobs as continued repeating the aria’s final lines, sobbing and choking out "non voglio morir . . . no voglio morir" over and over, before more sobs, shrieks as a hysterical Jussi returns, joining in the madness.

The closing few minutes were intense beyond the point of ordinary belief – and why should anything about this performance be ordinary?

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Licia, of course sang many more roles, logging in over 400 performances with the Metropolitan Opera over a long, distinguished singing career. Singing, however, wasn't her only career, as she went on - up until her passing, encouraging, coaching and aiding new, young singers to get established in this most difficult and rewarding art form. Madame Albanese truly was one of a kind, and though she has passed on, her work and legacy will live on. How lucky we were to have her! Rest in peace, dear lady.

Licia through the years.

Danke Hildegard Behrens

When each of us estimate the value, the worth of another human being, we do so by several criteria. There is the value this person has to the world at large, then to the more specific "world" they inhabited, and then - more personally - the value they had to us as an individual. Though I never met this woman in person, Hildegard Behrens remains one of the most important people in my life. She has been since I was a teenager and first opened that EMI recording of her as Salome back at the start of her career and of my obsession. To say that her death has had some effect on me would be an understatement. But it is her larger-than-life personality, her artistry, the integration of everything she was and had which she shaped into one of the greatest, most challenging, thrilling artists to have graced the stage in the past century - it is these things I choose to concentrate on, to celebrate and to remember.

I remember that very first time hearing her Salome, placing those black vinyl discs onto my father's turntable and dropping the needle. The next two hours (including picking up, turning over and changing records) our living room had become the ancient Judean court of Herod and his household. The fact our house was surrounded by cedars and cypress trees giving off their scent on that warm afternoon, only added to the sense of occasion, the mystery and the allure. By its end, my entire body was covered in gooseflesh, my heart was pumping wildly and I could almost feel the blood coursing through my veins. Who was this woman?

Over the ensuing decades, I became transported by "this woman's" performances and recordings every chance I could. When she brought her Brunhilde to the Met - I remember watching the telecasts, every night, eschewing invitations from friends to watch so I could make sure my VCR was loaded with tapes enough to not miss a beat. Few evenings in life had thrilled me, had moved me, or enthralled as did those four nights in front of my television set in my little DC basement apartment.

Elektra, Elettra, Marie, Leonore, Senta, Isolde, Tosca . . . Tosca? Yes, Tosca. Though audiences seemed divided (and wildly so) on Behrens as this most Italianate of characters, Behrens remains one of my favorite Toscas. Every note, every gesture, those amazing, beautiful, liquid eyes (which would, in a few more years make the world weep as Wotan bid farewell to his daughter), the violence - wild yet fully feminine, and the most spectacular leap any diva made from a parapet, thrilled me as Tosca should. I recall the first time seeing that leap of hers - I'd never seen a Tosca jump UP from the parapet, and Behrens' Roman diva - for a moment, made me think she was willing her ascension to heaven for that meeting with Scarpia and God . . . and then the violent plunge down to earth. Brava, diva!

Not everything went swimmingly for this great lady, and I recall how, when the Met presented its new Elektra, Behrens was found wanting. A "disaster," claimed many - saying she left the house in shame, never to return. Ha! Behrens was to make one of the greatest of triumphant returns any singer had to that august company - and do so in the same role and production. I recall listening to the Saturday broadcast, and the roar that went up as the lights came back, nearly obliterated my speakers. When it was telecast, I realized I was probably watching THE video I would review and obsess over the most for the rest of my life - or at least a good part of it. Few performances of anything I've witnessed have been as emotionally raw, as heartstoppingly beautiful and terrifying - and as cathartic as "Hildegard Becomes Elektra."

A year or so after the actual event, a friend dropped in to watch this with me one hot summer night, and he used a phrase I've grown to love: "Paolo," he said, "she's singing like there's no tomorrow!" That phrase describes this lady to the teeth: singing like there's no tomorrow!

Recently I watched the now legendary Met Ring and could only sit in wonder and awe, just as I had in my youth. Perhaps more so. The entire thing moved me, but nothing more than Behrens' Brunhilde. I waivered back and forth between which I loved more, her Walkure or Gotterdammerung, and realized: I don't have to choose. Having said that, however, I can think of no more tender, beautiful moment in all of opera than Wotan's Farewell, and here, Behrens, not singing a note - turned this scene into a visual duet as James Morris - remarkable as Wotan - bade farewell to his beloved child. Though far from home, I watched this scene last night via the miracle of the internet - and its poignancy, its genius from composer and artists alike - shattered me in that way that only the greatest works of art can do.

There is so much more to say about this great lady, so many memories flood my mind and make my heart race, but they don't need to be said - they've been felt. They've been felt down to my marrow. She will always be with us and her legacy shall ever speak for itself.

Thank you, Hildegard, for the abundant joy you brought to my life. Your loss is so difficult to take, but your life and light they will continue to burn, to warm, provoke and thrill. "Ruhe, ruhe, du Gott"