Word: soprano
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...solid (5 ft. 8 in., 150 lbs.) and imposing woman, Dramatic Soprano Nilsson was discovered, as the curtain rose, pacing the deck of the ship bearing Isolde to King Mark of Cornwall; for all the world she looked like a handsome Viking figurehead. In the long, angry denunciation of Tristan that followed, she displayed a big, flashing, vibrant voice that galvanized her audience and conveyed an immediate sense of the turbulent passions that animate the role. As the opera unfolded, Soprano Nilsson continued to dominate the stage with such ringing power that she cut without difficulty through the opulent textures...
...production as a whole was less exciting. German Tenor Karl Liebl, substituting as Tristan for the ailing Ramon Vinay, had neither stage presence nor the power to match the Nilsson salvos. Baritone Walter Cassel as Kurvenal and Bass Jerome Hines as King Mark both turned in workmanlike performances, and Soprano Irene Dalis was impressive as Brangaene. Conductor Karl Boehm led his orchestra through a methodical reading. As for the decor, with the world's best to choose from, the Met had again picked the second-rate. The sets by German Designer Teo Otto were pedestrian and confusing: starkly realistic...
...Soprano Nilsson's career has gathered slow momentum over the last decade. Born on a 'Swedish farm, she was still plowing fields when she was 18 ("My parents wanted I should be a good farmer") and singing in the local Lutheran church choir. Then a neighboring choirmaster started giving her vocal lessons, persuaded her to enter the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm. Delayed by the war, she made her first real splash in 1947 with the Stockholm Opera singing Verdi's Lady Macbeth. Gradually she developed a repertory that now includes all the Wagnerian soprano parts...
...genuine motif in the entire work-a rapid, stepwise up-and-down flourish that occurred again and again, eventually became Oedipus' climactic roar of agony. The work unfolded without set pieces or arias, and the staging by Director Günther Rennert was similarly spare, e.g., when Jocasta (Soprano Astrid Varnay) learned that she was the mother of Oedipus she threw her head back with mouth agape in a silence more horrifying than a scream...
...final scene the audience was deeply moved by Oedipus (Tenor Gerhard Stolze) staggering onstage before Designer Caspar Neher's abstract backdrop (it looked like a microphotograph of a germ culture) and raising his sightless eyes with a beatific smile. Soprano Varnay refused to watch from the wings because "I dream about such things." Reported TIME Correspondent Paul Moor: "For a non-German-speaking audience, this opera has long, boring stretches because the music is so subservient to the text. Nevertheless, Orff has created a theater work of gripping power...