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Leonie Rysanek: In a Blaze of Glory
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10259 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1993 |
3,348 Words |
| Author
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Matthew Gurewitsch
Matthew Gurewitsch has contributed articles on the arts to
such national publications as the Atlantic Monthly and Yale
Review. He is the host of Conductors in Conversation, a live
interview series at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New
York. |
After early recognition and triumph in her prime, what can a diva expect? Into the crystal ball float visions of long years spent in voluntary or enforced retirement, visited perhaps by a few faithful who remember, flipping through the pages of her scrapbook.
It has not turned out that way for Viennese soprano Leonie Rysanek. The San Francisco Opera presents her this month in Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades as the mysterious Countess, custodian of a fatal secret of the gambling table. In April, the Metropolitan Opera celebrates her thirty-fifth anniversary there with Richard Strauss' Elektra. Rysanek portrays the guilt-ridden Klytemnestra, murderer of her husband, King Agamemnon, a role she performed there two seasons ago to great acclaim. For over three decades, her role in this opera was the queen's gentler daughter, Chrysothemis, who burns with longing for wedded life and motherhood. On film, though never in the theater, she assumed the voice-shredding title role of the vengeful Elektra herself. No one else has performed all three of these fate-crazed women; do not expect anyone to do so soon.
The parts Rysanek sings now, in her late phase, have dwindled to a precious few. She has descended from the heights of the born soprano--one eminent maestro used to cajole her not to "take summer vacations" on her top notes--to mezzo soprano terrain; the burden of the prima donna has passed on to other shoulders. Yet at sixty-seven, and looking more like an elegant fifty, Rysanek is still whipping audiences and critics into the sort of frenzy that opera fans live for. She holds them spellbound not with memories of who she used to be but with the full resources of her art: the power and individuality of her voice, the passion of her delivery, the authority of her dramatic conceptions.
She sings at the world's foremost houses, and she commands top fees. "That's a condition," she notes. "After all, I don't have to sing." In return, she gives full value. It is a simple matter of artistic self-respect--and respect for art.
Opera lovers are starved for the order of experience Rysanek's presence all but guarantees. "There are many good, young voices," she remarks, "but they don't want to give themselves. People want to see you give everything: your heart, your mind--not just voice. If you're not just singing, then the singing doesn't have to be as perfect."
Rysanek's Recordings
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