Kulturkompasset | critics of culture events

Elisabeth Söderström 1927-2009


With Elisabeth Söderströms dead, (born in Stockholm on May 7, 1927, died November 20, 2009, aged 82), the music world has lost one of its greatest personalities.

Elisabeth Søderstrøm, foto Enar Merkel Rydberg, Kungliga Operan, Stockholm

Elisabeth Søderstrøm, foto Enar Merkel Rydberg, Kungliga Operan, Stockholm

To the opera lovers, her name recalls immediately the Janacek’s operas that she recorded in the late seventies under Charles Mackerras, a series that played an important role in bringing the composer’s works in repertoire on the stages around the world

. There, she was a stunning Emilia Marty, Jenufa and Kat’a Kabanova, but many people couldn’t realize the extraordinary versatility of the Swedish soprano

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Her career can be ideally divided in two parts: The first ten years she spent in her homeland Sweden, where she had her debut in 1947 as Mozart’s Bastienne and then was (evidence of her versatility) Mimì, Eurydice, the three heroines of Hoffman’s Tales, and Pamina.

Her international career started seriously only in the midle of the ‘50s, first in Salzburg, then in Glyndebourne where she had her debut as Ariadne auf Naxos’ by Richard Strauss .

At the end of the decade she crossed the ocean: in 1958 she debuted at the Metropolitan Opera House as Susanna and stayed there until 1964, when she decided it was time to come back to Sweden: Her sons went to school and she wanted to stay with them.

This choice shows how definitely not a diva Söderström was. All her colleagues had her dear for her sympathy and common sense in team work.

Once back in her homeland, she started to promote operas everywhere she could and at every social level: factories, schools, also jails, she said of herself ‘I’m almost a preacher’. She had also her own TV show.

Versatile she was: she’s still remembered for her Mélisande under Pierre Boulez, a theatre achievement that became a world-appreciated studio recording
. She was also Butterfly and Musetta, and great singer both in Mozart (Susanna, the Countess, Fiordiligi) and Strauss, specially in the most lyric roles, such as in Capriccio or Intermezzo.

Speaking of Strauss, she was not the only singer who sang all the three leading female parts in Rosenkavalier, but was the lonely who did it in the same season: this happened in 1959: Sophie at the Met, Octavian in Glyndebourne and the Marschallin in Stockholm!

Also in contemporary music Söderström played her role: she was admired in 1963 as Elisabeth Zimmer in Henze’s Elegy for young lovers, and sang in the prèmiere of Aspern papers, Domink Argento’s opera from the novel by Henry James.

At the Met she came back in 1983 and there her last stage appearance took place in 1999 when, back from her semi-retirement, she played the old Countess in Pique Dame, joining her own charisma, grown with years of experience on stage, to the character’s noble autority.

At the end of the seventies she wrote her own autobiography, I min tonart (in English In my own key).

Elisabeth Söderström will ever hold her own place in first rank in the opera history, and luckily an extensive discography will keep her memory alive.

 

 

 

 

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