Following my personal memories further down in 'A star fell', I had the honour of writing Hildegard Behrens's obituary for The Guardian, now up and running here. The newspaper version has a splendid full-length colour portrait of La B as Brunnhilde, managing to look austerely beautiful in the unattractive weeds of Otto Schenk's hideously dressed Met production.
We must have a clip of Behrens at her most idiosyncratic. There are three YouTube chunks of her in 1994 as Strauss's Elektra. I thought the final dance of death was a bit close to the bone, so here's the big soliloquy. Levine's conducting is pretty fine, too.
David, thank you for that very fine tribute in the Guardian.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Will, I thought you'd have something to say about the great lady on your own blog sooner or later.
ReplyDeleteI apologise that it was written in (albeit loving) haste, so a few words get repeated rather more often than they would if I'd had time to polish it. But all sincerely meant (and as I said, her Salome was a turning point in my musical life).