Régine Crespin; “Der Gärtner”; MÖRIKE-LIEDER; Hugo Wolf

This channel is the re-establishment of previous channels that have been sadly terminated.
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Régine Crespin–soprano
John Wustman–piano
1974
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“Régine Crespin, French Soprano, Dies at 80
By Anthony Tommasini
July 6, 2007
Régine Crespin, the French operatic soprano and later mezzo-soprano, one of the most important vocal artists to emerge from France in the decades after World War II, died Wednesday in Paris, where she lived. She was 80.

The cause was liver cancer, said Mireille Gaucher, her personal secretary.

Ms. Crespin was widely admired for the elegance, warmth and subtlety of her singing, especially in the French and German operatic repertories. Early on, the natural carrying power of her voice seemed to point to a career as a dramatic soprano. Indeed, she made her 1950 debut at the regional company in Mulhouse, France, singing Elsa in Wagner’s “Lohengrin.”

Yet Ms. Crespin’s singing was imbued with nuanced phrasing, telling attention to text, creamy lyricism and lovely high pianissimos. While she had an enveloping voice, she always seemed to keep something in reserve, leading some listeners to sense a touch too much French restraint. But most opera buffs valued Ms. Crespin for the effortless richness, lyrical nobility and subtle colorings of her singing. She was also a sophisticated actress whose Junoesque presence commanded attention.

Ms. Crespin’s Metropolitan Opera debut came in 1962 as the Marschallin in “Der Rosenkavalier,” directed by the soprano Lotte Lehmann, who had been the most renowned interpreter of the role. Reviewing Ms. Crespin’s portrayal, the New York Times critic Harold C. Schonberg wrote that she gave “a simply beautiful performance” enriched with “all kinds of delicate shading.” But when she let out her full voice, he added, it “soared over the orchestra and all over the house — big, confident and beautiful.”

Ms. Crespin was born on Feb. 23, 1927, in Marseilles. When she was 5, her family moved to Nîmes, where her parents opened an “immense shoe store with seventeen saleswomen,” the soprano wrote in “On Stage, Off Stage: A Memoir,” translated into English by Gladys Bourdain, a staff editor at The New York Times, and published in 1997 by Northeastern University Press. A frank story of her life as a woman and an artist, it includes mature discussions of her romantic relationships.

Her childhood was affected by the deprivations of the war in Europe and, even more, by her mother’s alcoholism. At 12, as she wrote in her memoir, she was increasingly unnerved by the night presence of this “drunken, staggering woman who could hardly speak,” her adored “Mama,” who by day was so vivacious and intelligent.

Only because Ms. Crespin failed the entrance exams to college at 16 was she was permitted by her pragmatic father to study voice, eventually entering the conservatory in Paris. After her debut she sang at the Paris Opera for the next six years. But her first prominent successes came in regional houses of France, with roles like Sieglinde in Wagner’s “Walküre” and Puccini’s Tosca.

When she auditioned for Wieland Wagner, the composer’s grandson, who ran the Bayreuth Festival, she sang Wagner arias in French because she had not sung them in German. Still, she was given the part of Kundry in “Parsifal” at the 1958 festival. Suddenly she urgently needed a German coach, which led her to Lou Bruder, a professor of German literature who eventually became her husband. Their marriage ended in divorce after 11 years. Ms. Crespin, who had no children, left no immediate survivors.

Her international career grew steadily, with regular appearances in the world’s major houses. In the 1960s she made some classic recordings, among them her account of the Marschallin in Georg Solti’s Decca recording of “Der Rosenkavalier” and her Sieglinde in Solti’s Decca recording of “Die Walküre,” part of that conductor’s complete Ring Cycle.

In 1967 she sang Sieglinde to Birgit Nilsson’s Brünnhilde at the Met, with Herbert von Karajan conducting a production that he also directed. Reviewing that performance for The Times of London, the critic Conrad L. Osborne wrote that “Nilsson and Crespin spurring each other on make for the sort of thing one remembers with a chill for years.”

In later life Ms. Crespin won wide recognition as a voice teacher. During some 1995 master classes at the Mannes College of Music in New York, the students were enraptured not only by her insightful critiques, but by her insider tales about opera stars.

Recalling her performances at the Met with the powerhouse tenor Franco Corelli in “Tosca” and Massenet’s “Werther,” she said he was convinced that eating raw garlic before a performance was good for the voice. But when they sang duets, Corelli would regularly burp. She learned to adjust, Ms. Crespin said.”; NYT