In Memoriam: Hildegard Behrens (1937-2009)

“Zu Wotans Willen sprichst du, sagst du mir, was du willst; wer bin ich, wär’ ich dein Wille nicht?” ["You are speaking your will when you tell me your will. Who am I if not your will?" - Translation added, from libretto accompanying the Metropolitan Opera's recording of Die Walküre.]

These are the words that the Valkyrie maiden Brünnhilde implores Wotan with to confer the inner turmoil wrought by the adverse vicissitude of events that unfold in Wagner’s Ring. Only a scant few other scenes in the epic tetralogy exhibit Wagner’s ability to create moments of such poignancy and intimacy in a world
of primordial chaos—indeed a refreshing contrast to the preponderating Sturm and Drang that permeates much of this Norse saga. While the role of Brünnhilde is stereotypically awarded to stentorian sopranos of colossal instruments, scenes like this lend truth to anecdotal recollections of Wagner’s instructions: to play
sensitively and with clarity, and for the singers to understand the character above all else. In its illustrious performance history, Wagner’s Ring has been graced and cursed by the Herculean forces that permit only the finest vocal athletes to step up to task of interpreting his Olympian scores. More often than not, because of the demands of the roles, singers up to task muster the minimum requirement of singing over the oceanic waves of orchestral water, leaving little more than rudimentary snippets of character and drama that Wagner incorporated in his work.

In the Ring’s pivotal role of Brünnhilde alone, history books will tell us that Kirsten Flagstad, Birgit Nilsson, and Astrid Varnay are the Wagnerian paragons who have transformed the role into a figure of the greatest indelibility. However stellar their performances were, listeners of this generation will remember another soprano who accorded the character with the intimacy and the abandon that has become a hallmark of her career: Hildegard Behrens. Though possessing an instrument with only half the vocal girth and a silvery wisp rather than diamantine steel of Nilsson, the burnished bronze of Varnay, or the molten gold of Flagstad, Hildegard Behrens was a singer who through sheer intelligence, generosity, and dramatic commitment scaled the operatic literature’s most difficult parts triumphantly during her three decades onstage.

Madame Behrens, although remembered today as a premier interpreter of the great Wagnerian and Straussian roles, did not always set her sights on a career in music. After graduating with a degree in law from the University of Freiburg, she worked as a junior barrister prior to committing herself to developing her voice with a teacher in her alma mater. There, she met a group of friends who urged her to pursue music due to her innate skill and passion for the art. In 1971, Mme. Behrens debuted in the role of the Countess in a Freiburg production of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro. A year later, she was inducted as a member of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein; from there, her career continued to blossom.

Although small roles constituted her repertory during these embryonic years, Mme. Behrens gradually equipped herself with the stamina and the endurance required to sing the larger roles. During the years of her Düsseldorf incumbency, she had become an outstanding Leonore in Beethoven’s Fidelio and a harrowing Marie in Alban Berg’s Wozzeck. On the 15th of October, 1976, the Metropolitan Opera contracted her to play the violent character of Giorgietta in Puccini’s Il Tabarro. By then, Hildegard Behrens was forging her way through the glamorous world of operatic stardom. The Straussian and Wagnerian roles that were to propel her as the toast of the Wagnerian world, however, were yet to catch the eye of this gifted performer.

Prior to the 1977 Salzburg Festival, Europe’s musical Kaiser Herbert von Karajan scouted the German lands for an ideal Salome: a gleaming dramatic soprano voice with a kittenish allure and a puerile sadism encased in a streamlined body—a rarity those days, as most dramatic sopranos ate themselves to roly-poly proportions. While rehearsing the part of Marie with her company, Karajan found her so arresting a singing actress that he hired her to perform Salome in Europe’s most celebrated music festival. It was this unforgettable production of Strauss’ Biblical drama that catapulted Hildegard Behrens to the limelight of the operatic world.

Engagements in the most prestigious European and North American houses awarded the singer the chance to enchant and captivate audiences with roles like Salome, Elektra, Emilia Marty (in Janacek’s Makropoulos Case), Tosca, Elettra (in Mozart’s Idomeneo), Senta, and Fidelio. Podium luminaries like Herbert von Karajan, Sir Georg Solti, Karl Böhm, James Levine, and Leonard Berstein engaged her on many an occasion to critical acclaim. Dr. Böhm, a fastidious conductor who held only the greatest respect for the best singers, called Behrens his “last great Leonora.” A 1978 recording taped from the Bavarian Opera showcases the communicative rapport between conductor and singer—indeed, out of all the recorded live performances of Beethoven’s sole stage drama, this one comes close to the top.

Claudio Abbado, a podium master with an Italian heart and a German intellect, created with her as Marie today’s definitive recording of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck. Leonard Bernstein, the North American Grand Pooh-bah of classical music, asked Mme. Behrens to honor him the privilege of committing Wagner’s seminal music drama, Tristan und Isolde, to record. The product of this venture is one of the most febrile and narcotic recordings of the opera. Though Lenny employed some of the most glacial tempi in his vision of Wagner’s metaphysical tragedy, Behrens valiantly sailed through this extremely exposed and strenuous role, finally capping it with a Liebestod that transcended the boundaries of time and space. But she can sing French characters quite well too. A recording long overdue for rerelease, Albéric Magnard’s Tristanesque Guercoeur with Michel Plasson conducting, Behrens as Giselle, and Jose Van Dam as the eponymous character, evinces her artistic malleability for wearing different linguistic and musical guises.

When the legendary centenary Ring production at Bayreuth closed its curtains in 1980, the new producers of the next cycle and its conductor, Sir Georg Solti, were looking for a Brünnhilde who would don a black leather costume with sequined studs while hurling battle cries and ruminating long and drawn Schopenhauerean soliloquys. Hildegard was at the time rehearsing in a production of Puccini’s Turandot when the feisty Hungarian maestro pulled strings and transferred her to Bayreuth to be its next Brünnhilde. Although Peter Hall’s production was panned as a disaster, Behrens triumphed and was decorated with massive standing ovations, extolling reviews, and bouquets of flowers that threatened to overfill her dressing room. A new Brünnhilde was born.

It was during this decade that Mme. Behrens intermittently spent time in Europe and North America, by then flashing a spanking new calling card with Brünnhilde written all over it. One of Austria’s most renowned producers of opera, Nikolaus Lehnhoff, picked her as his Brünnhilde of choice to star in two of his Ring productions: a premiere with Wolfgang Sawallisch and the Bavarian State Opera, the other with Sir Donald Runnicles and the San Francisco War Memorial Opera. At New York’s Metropolitan Opera, she was initially a Sieglinde to Gwyneth Jones’ Brünnhilde. The tides would later turn with her playing the part of Brünnhilde to a Sieglinde of no less stature than the grand dame of opera’s aristocracy—Leonie Rysanek. Rysanek, a protégé of the legendary Lotte Lehmann, was at one time the owner of the “Lotte Lehmann” ring. Upon Rysanek’s death in 1997, she passed it on to Hildegard Behrens.

In the fall of 1986, the Met unveiled a production that was to become a musical Mecca for Wagner lovers of the next two decades—the lush, realist Otto Schenk Ring designed with that magician of lights, Gunther Schneider-Siemssen. The Brünnhilde was none other than Hildegard Behrens. This production, and the part that she played in it, was the crowning glory of her illustrious career in music. Captured on video and broadcast on PBS, Behrens’ Brünnhilde was for many the first to wean several neophyte operaphiles and soon-to-be Wagnerians of that generation with the wonders of the Ring saga. No zany Regie ideas in this production. Like Birgit Nilsson, who introduced the listeners of two generations back with her gleaming Excalibur of a voice in the landmark Solti Ring, Hildegard Behrens enchanted her new audiences in video and surround sound with her unique interpretation of Wagner’s greatest and most noble heroine. Twice was she Levine’s Brünnhilde for posterity: first on these seminal videos, then finally in a series of recordings known released by Deutsche Grammophon with the same forces that inaugurated this great production. Brian Large, the video director who filmed the Ring, once had aspirations of working with Maria Callas that was stymied by her untimely death in 1977. Upon completing his filming of Brünnhilde’s revenge pact in second act of Götterdämmerung, he exclaimed that his finest work was finally completed.

The waning years of Hildegard Behrens’ career was studded with Elektras and various Wagnerian roles like Kundry that allowed the singer to invest in her trademark brand of dramatic acuity without relying much on vocal velour. Indeed, while Behrens was for a new host of listeners the quintessential dramatic soprano of their generation, this artist nonetheless still had her dissenters. Legions of listeners who flock to opera houses to savor her art continue to extol the merits of her histrionics. The singer was known best for her easy and radiant top—a pillar of light that soared and cut through dense orchestral layers like missiles shooting out of a silo. However, the multiple forays into the big Wagnerian parts left an essentially lyrical timbre with its unique, luminous, and laser-like focus in tatters, especially at the bottom of her range. When this soprano dips below the stave, the silvery purity that characterized her brilliant top turned into guttural roar that could excite and sometimes turn off listeners acclimated to listening for beautiful sounds. Her acting too, could be melodramatic and over the top. However strange some of her vocal emissions could be, her penchant for stage dramatics nonetheless allowed her to turn her deficiencies into unforgettable merits. For instance, while her Tosca was as Italianate as a Porsche can be, her maledictions against Scarpia, exemplified by a “Muori, dannato!” that reeked of potent venom, were thrilling spectacles of theater.

When discussing an artist like Hildegard, it is essential that one judge her not as a singer perfect in all musical respects, but as an artist who encompasses the entire operatic macrocosm within her performances—an understanding of humanity within the role, so to speak. Once compared to the enigmatic Italian thespian Eleonora Duse, Mme. Behrens was one such person who never sacrificed dramatic verisimilitude for a criminal blandness that affected the bygone performances of an earlier era. She threw herself into her roles with such feral abandon that one forgets that she is an opera singer thrashing about onstage. Although frayed by the wear and tear brought about by roles like Elektra and Brünnhilde, her voice and its outstanding resilience allowed her to perform well into the 2000s, with her first Kundry taking place in 1998 Dresden’s palatial Semperoper. While having gone through a multitude of vocal crises, Mme. Behrens was able to recover her instrument each time so that she can continue to bequeath, albeit with diminished vocal resources, the unwavering generosity and commitment that characterized her early performances. In 1992, after having essayed multiple Brünnhildes, she entered into her last recorded operatic venture with Sir Georg Solti, playing the shrewish Dyer’s Wife in Strauss’ Die Frau Ohne Schatten. When compared with other singers who have played the part, Behrens’ wispy timbre, willowy countenance, and dramatic bite come close to perfection. She is indeed, the Färberin personified. During the same year, Otto Schenk’s realist Elektra production showcased the singer in poor form, only to have this phoenix of a soprano revive her musical powers two years later in the same production with one of the most tumultuous ovations in Metropolitan Opera History.

The vestiges of a great career in opera had the singer spending her final days as a master class instructor and a Lieder recitalist. Her innate love for music, her feel for its enchanting undulations, her penchant for verbal communication, her intelligence both onstage and off, and her generosity have preserved her art as a paragon of the school of singing actresses. Like her predecessors Maria Callas, Magda Olivero, Renata Scotto, Martha Mödl, and Leonie Rysanek, it was through her imperfection that she struck the stage as a character of the first order. Like Tosca, she lived for art, and she lived for love—a love for the music that she served during her thirty years as a veritable prima donna without the saccharine antics. She died on August 18, 2009 while preparing for recitals and master classes in Kusatsu, Japan. She is survived by a son and a daughter.

Richard Wagner, during the first Bayreuth Festival of 1876, mastered all aspects of stage and musical production for his groundbreaking production of the Ring cycle. He oversaw the costumes, the music making, the acting, and the singing. He stressed clarity from his orchestra, telling the musicians never to drown the singers so as not to sacrifice the depth of the written drama. Turning to his singers, he stipulated that the sounds they produce should not be anything less than conductive to enhancing the audience’s understanding of the text. One must wonder, had he been born a hundred years later, what he would have made of Hildegard Behrens—a stage actress who committed herself to his cosmic Gesamtkunstwerks with the rare commitment, the sincerity, and the abandon that characterize only the finest artists in this arena. Rest in peace Madame Behrens. You will be missed.
-Christian Ocier, Grand Rapids MI
I am a lover of opera who finds himself more and more fascinated with the kind of dedication that the finest artists in the field invest in their art form. I do classical music and book reviews too.