Helen Traubel

Helen Traubel (born June 20, 1899 in St. Louis , † July 28, 1972 in Santa Monica ) was an American opera singer ( soprano ).

Life

After studying singing in St. Louis and New York, Traubel made her debut in 1923 as a concert singer with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. After a concert in 1926, she received a first offer for an engagement at the New York Metropolitan Opera , which she initially turned down in order to continue her musical education.

Traubel had her first appearance at her future parent company on June 12, 1937 in the world premiere of Walter Damrosch's opera The Man without a Country - at the instigation of the composer. Engagements at the operas of Chicago (1937–46) and San Francisco (1945–47) followed. In 1939 she sang again at the MET , where she had a sensational success as Sieglinde in a performance of Richard Wagner's Walküre as partner of Kirsten Flagstad ( Brünnhilde ) and Lauritz Melchior ( Siegmund ). She then became a regular member of the house and in 1941, when Kirsten Flagstad was unable to return from Norway to the Metropolitan Opera due to the German invasion, her successor as the leading Wagner soprano in North America. She was also celebrated in guest appearances in Mexico and Buenos Aires. In 1953 she made a guest appearance in London.

In 1953, the singer's contract was no longer renewed by the manager of the MET, Sir Rudolf Bing , because the singer had increasingly appeared in operettas, musicals, films and television programs since the Second World War and he was of the opinion that this was due to the reputation of the house could not be agreed. In 1955 she took part in a Broadway show Pipe Dream in New York .

She was also gifted as a writer and published detective novels ("The Ptomaine Canary", "The Metropolitan Opera Murders").

Helen Traubel is the great-aunt of the German opera and concert singer Sarah Traubel .

meaning

Traubel had a very voluminous, powerful and dramatic soprano voice, due to which she was the leading Wagner soprano of the MET and thus the most famous opera house in the world for more than a decade, where she played ten major roles in 133 performances (plus 43 performances in the annual tour of the ensemble) sang.

Traubel recorded records for Columbia and RCA . There are also numerous live recordings from the Metropolitan Opera, especially as partners of Lauritz Melchior and Friedrich Schorr , who confirm her position as one of the most important Wagner singers of the 20th century.

Audio samples

• Tchaikovsky
• "Assignment" (Richard Strauss)

literature

• Helen Traubel: St. Louis Woman. In collaboration with Richard G. Hubler. Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York NY 1959, (Autobiography. Reprint: Arno Press, New York NY 1977, ISBN 0-405-09712-3 ).