| Eleanor Steber |
Article Index for Eleanor |
Shopping Steber |
Website Links For Eleanor |
Information AboutEleanor Steber |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT ELEANOR STEBER | |
| american opera singers | |
| steber, eleanor | |
| sopranos | |
| hollywood walk of fame | |
| divas | |
|
Eleanor Steber was born 17 July 1914, this to correct the generally mis-informed notation of a 1917 birth. Her publicity agent falsified her age early on; she later set the record straight. She sang at the Metropolitan Opera from 1940 to 1961, a career chiefly distinguished for the high-lying soprano roles of Richard Strauss, and Mozart heroines as well. She was quite versatile,singing Wagner, Berg, some French opera, the world premiere of the American opera 'Vanessa' by Samuel Barber and a number of Metropolitan Opera premieres, including Strauss's 'Arabella' and Mozart's 'Abduction from the Seraglio.' Of erratic temperament, she could indulge in life's pleasures in the extreme, and gradually developed a reputation for hard-living; some would argue lifestyle took a toll on her voice, and indeed on occasion she could plainly be over-tired and out of form. In the late 1940s she made a brilliant success of the Mozart Figaro Countess at the Edinburgh Festival, so much so that HMV Records engaged her to come to their studios after the Festival to record Mozart and other popular arias. By the account of Walter Susskind, the conductor of both the Edinburgh performances and the proposed recordings, she arrived at the Ealing studios not feeling well and admitted to having partied most of the night. She could not sing her standard arias, saying "I don't feel like singing that." Susskind, trying to save the recording session, responded, "What do you feel like singing?" Steber thought for a moment and said, "Let's try Depuis le jour..." Orchestra parts were found and the disc was cut in one take. It became a famous recording, revealing, especially in the arching opening pages, a quite beautiful vocal line and quality. Her career was often marked by incidents such as this, including the summer of 1953 at the Bayreuth Bavaria Festival of Wagner, where her performances of Elsa in Lohengrin were highly acclaimed, her personal deportment in society much less so. Even so, she stands as one of America's greatest native born and trained operatic sopranos. Her many recordings are still available as are audio and visual tapes of her radio and television broadcasts for the Voice of Firestone. No survey of American opera singing is complete without serious attention to Steber. She died in 1990 followng heart valve surgery. Peter G. Davis in his survey of American Opera Singers offers a fine portrait of Steber. #### |
|
|