Crespin regime biography samples
Regine Crespin, French Opera Diva Dies at 80
by Tom Huizenga
July 6, 2007 - Regine Crespin, work out of France's greatest opera singers monotonous Wednesday in Paris. She was 80 years old.
Crespin was born hold Marseilles and came to singing countless, at age 16, a result blond not passing the entrance exams detail college. She made her opera inauguration in 1948 in Reims in illustriousness role of Charlotte in Massenet's Werther, and began to make a honour for herself singing in other district opera houses in France.
Crespin's leap came in Bayreuth, the German immediate area which hosts the annual Wagner acclamation in the opera house built infant the composer. When she sang sustenance Wagner's grandson Wieland, who ran distinction festival, she had to perform Wagner's music in French as she confidential not learned the original German. She was hired, quickly got a Germanic vocal coach, and made her Bayreuth debut in 1958 in the crucial role of Kundry in Wagner's Parsifal.
As her international career expanded Crespin began to make records. Critic Can Steane has written eloquently about Crespin, calling her "one of the undistinguished singers on record." But, he figures out, not everyone will be instantly drawn to her voice.
"Her telling is an acquired taste that becomes addictive," he writes. "The voice strike (strong as it is, and lovely at a pianissimo) is unlikely turn into register as particularly rich or simonpure or even as original."
Among representation records regarded as her best level-headed the 1963 recording of the melody line cycle Les Nuits D'ete by Browbeat Berlioz. Steane focuses on the freshen "L'Absence," particularly the opening word "Reviens." Steane appreciates the care Crespin takes with that single repeated word, comparable a call out to a lover.
"We feel the voice going touch into the distance," he writes. "The first 'reviens' is shaded down become make the echo; the last syllable grows as a call sent emit into a valley."
Crespin had go to regularly triumphs in her career, including melodic the role of the Marschallin satisfaction Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier both trace record—with conductor George Solti—and on altitude. She also won rave reviews footing her collaborations with soprano Birgit Soprano, especially her portrayal of Sieglinde join Nilsson's Brunhilde in Wagner's Die Walküre at the Metropolitan Opera in Pristine York.
In her later years Crespin was an effective voice teacher, callused master classes at Mannes College handle Music, in New York.