She was, I believe, the greatest Salome I ever experienced. Even her breath and pauses between phrases gave meaning to her interpretation as in this role also.
Such a heartfelt performance, and a compliment to her sublime Brunnhilde. Hildegard Behrens was not necessarily the most brilliant (though at times she was), but she was always the most charismatic and heartfelt heroine. She is forever my Brunnhilde, and upon discovering her Elektra, she might just become that too.
How wonderful to see some snippets again of this electrifying Electra, I was lucky to see quite a few of the performances. I was house sitting on 66 West, and the back entrance came out on the little MET square. In addition it was a blistering cold winter so standing tickets were easy to get, most nights the usher would let us sit in the expensive seats as there were always no-shows because of the weather. It truly was an Electra for the ages from the whole cast!
When I began to listen to opera, Hildegard Behrens was my first Leonore in Hamburg. 1979. 1983 first Brünnhilde in Bayreuth. She showed me what musical Theatre can be. She is one of the reasons I'm working with that art form.
I saw Hildegard Behrens in all the great roles she sang in New York. Truly one of music’s great artists. I also saw her in the theater as Elektra, although not this exact performance. She BECAME Elektra, in both voice and character. She was NOT insane, as so many sopranos like to portray her. Behrens studied as a lawyer, and especially in the recognition scene, she presents arguments from all angles to explain her life’s course. Yes, Hoffmanstahl wrote the words, but it takes a great artist to make them believable. When the performance ended, the audience was shocked and faint, and then exploded in an ovation.
For the very few carpers here on Behrens’s voice and technique, here’s the simple proof you’re wrong: pitch is the first thing to go almost always and her pitch is unerring. It’s actually uncanny how dead-on she is. A superb musician and artist.
I'm impressed! Lots of lyrical beauty but power when she needed it. Only Nilsson was a better actress and only after Wieland Wagner coached her. This is quite wonderful. Her voice became more unattractive towards the end of her career, but here she sounded great. There is something personal and intimate about her unique sound.
Perhaps this was more convincing heard live, but I find Behrens's voice acidulous and lacking in tonal character, plus her diction is awful. She probably compensated for these by being loud, but Gwyneth Jones and others outclassed her.
Thank you! For a native German speaker, she has to make all kinds of vowel adjustments in order to make a stable sound. When her words are clear, it’s only because she’s more or less stopped producing tone. Her tuning is awful, she has to take all kind of catch breaths to get thru a phrase so many notes are shorter than they are marked in the score. And she can’t sing softly without going off pitch. Why people praise this woman is beyond me. Even her acting is wildly over praised, campy and flailing. You can see how unhealthy her singing is just by looking at her, her shoulders are up to her ears and her jaw is basically pressed against her chest. Fwiw, for all the hype her fans make about this performance, she got mixed reviews and there were performances in both runs she did in nyc where her voice fell apart. I’m sure she was an intelligent and hard working person, but I don’t know of a singer less well equipped for the music who got praised as much as she did.
@@karldelavigne8134 People act like her being German is some kind of trump card. Her diction is awful. Many non German singers are able to pronounce with greater clarity and without taking the voice of its support to make the words clearly.
@@AP-dd3xp I must disagree. Her techniques is the main aspect that pulled her through so many years of singing roles that were in fact unsuitable for her voice.
