Fifty-Five Years in Five Acts: My Life in Opera

Rating:
Summary: What a Treat!
Review: A lot of opera singers have published their autobiographies the last few years, but almost none are as good as what Astrid Varnay and Donald Arthur have given us here. Yes, we get some dirt (the problems with Bing and von Karajan, for instance) but, unlike others, Varnay never comes across as either bitter or bitchy. Instead it is her story and that's that. She is straightforward, tells her side of things and moves on to another subject.

She also pays the reader the compliment of assuming that if we are interested in her and her career, we will be interested in her roles, some of her reseach on the roles and why she feels the way she does about the characters she played on stage. That is not to suggest for one minute that she gets bogged down in endless tedious details. Far from it! For all of the wonderful digging into her roles, there is also always a delightful quip to go along with it. The humor is there, the talk about colleagues, but it is a refreshing departure from the usual "And then I sang in Vienna and they loved me, and then I went to Berlin and they loved me even more" story. This is obviously the very real story of a singer whose life was the theater.

What stays with me, long after finishing the book, is the enormous amount of work and unrelenting dedication Varnay put into her honeing of both her voice and her dramatic instincts. It took constant hard work, but it was a labor of love--and that love shines through on every page here. The book is the perfect companion to the live performance CDs of Varnay in her prime that are now available. And the world is a better place for having both.

Rating:
Summary: Five Stars for operatic legend Astrid Varney's memoir
Review: Astrid Varney was born in Stockholm to two Hungarian opera singers. As a child she lived in South America prior to the family's immigration to New York.
Varney was trained as a singer by her talented mother and an older teacher whom she later married. Varney premiered with the Metropolitan Opera on Dec. 6, 1941 as Sieglinde in Wagner's
monumental "Walkure.' Since thay day Miss Varnay has traveled the world singing in great opera palaces and in regional companies.
Her comments on the life of a classical singer; various colleagues in the field and the various locales her craft has taken her to make for fascinating backstage reading for all of us who are opera buffs.
This biography is well written laced with humor and honesty.
I knew little about Varney prior to reading this book but am glad I made her acqaintance.
Bravissimo to this down to earth diva dedicated to her art!

Rating:
Summary: Five Stars for operatic legend Astrid Varney's memoir
Review: Astrid Varney was born in Stockholm to two Hungarian opera singers. As a child she lived in South America prior to the family's immigration to New York.
Varney was trained as a singer by her talented mother and an older teacher whom she later married. Varney premiered with the Metropolitan Opera on Dec. 6, 1941 as Sieglinde in Wagner's
monumental "Walkure.' Since thay day Miss Varnay has traveled the world singing in great opera palaces and in regional companies.
Her comments on the life of a classical singer; various colleagues in the field and the various locales her craft has taken her to make for fascinating backstage reading for all of us who are opera buffs.
This biography is well written laced with humor and honesty.
I knew little about Varney prior to reading this book but am glad I made her acqaintance.
Bravissimo to this down to earth diva dedicated to her art!

Rating:
Summary: What a fabulous book for opera lovers
Review: I have read this book over and over. Astrid Varnay has so much to offer readers who love opera. It is a great book to read through, but there are parts that take a couple of readings for a trained musician to understand. Her intelligence is evident in every word and so is her humanity. She is most knowledgeable about the works of Wagner and Strauss, so those interested in lighter opera may not be as well served, but her concepts are important for all opera singers. This book is quite honest and those who want some "dirt" on old singers, conductors and impressarios will be well-served. Go for it.

Rating:
Summary: What a fabulous book for opera lovers
Review: I have read this book over and over. Astrid Varnay has so much to offer readers who love opera. It is a great book to read through, but there are parts that take a couple of readings for a trained musician to understand. Her intelligence is evident in every word and so is her humanity. She is most knowledgeable about the works of Wagner and Strauss, so those interested in lighter opera may not be as well served, but her concepts are important for all opera singers. This book is quite honest and those who want some "dirt" on old singers, conductors and impressarios will be well-served. Go for it.

Rating:
Summary: Engrossing musical memoir
Review: In the pantheon of twentieth-century Wagnerian sopranos, Astrid Varnay ranks very high, though she is woefully underrepresented on available recordings today. Through the efforts of friends and supporters, detailed in the preface, her autobiography has been made available in English, and music and opera fans everywhere should be grateful.

Varnay's story, told calmly but with frequent flashes of wit, begins with the tale of how her parents, both opera singers, met, married, and made their careers in Europe before coming to the U.S. and settling in New York. Young Violet Varnay, as she was dubbed by a teacher who could not cope with her Hungarian name Ibolyka (little violet), worked as a secretary, waited in the Met standing room line and quietly prepared herself for an operatic career. She prepared so well with her coach and eventual husband, Hermann Weigert, in fact, that her resume was met with astonished laughter at her eventual Met audition. The powers that be were quickly won over upon actually hearing her, and her stage career began at the Met in 1941 as a last-minute replacement for Lotte Lehmann in Die Walkure. Before retiring in the late 90s, after a career spanning more than five decades, her voice and dramatic presence would take her to Bayreuth and all of the great opera houses of the world.

It is of course difficult to say how much of the structure of the book stems from the singer herself, and how much from her co-author, Donald Arthur; but one of the attractions of this memoir is the skillful mix of narrative, anecdote and self-analysis of Varnay's numerous roles. She draws portraits of her husband, family and colleagues that leap vividly from the page, without ever descending to mere bitchiness, though she does allow herself some jabs at Herbert von Karajan and Rudolf Bing. The ultimate impression is of a strong, self-aware but not overweeningly arrogant personality--someone one would like to meet and talk to in person. One is touched by her inexhaustible eagerness to perform, and her capacity for discovering insights into roles usually dismissed as worthy only of comprimaria singers. She is also not above laughing at herself, and includes some amusingly informal photographs. Highly recommended.