Life's arc, even with exceptions, is of course consistent. With the very best of longevity and health, we human beings get approximately 70-90 years to walk the earth in one lifetime. This may be glaringly obvious but when parallel lives are juxtaposed, it can be quite sobering.To those of us who lived a significant part of our lives in the middle to latter part of the 20th Century who were/are passionate about the operas of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss, there have been only a small handful of soprano names that were literally synonymous with the great heroic leading ladies in these works. The names are Birgit Nilsson, Astrid Varnay, Martha Moedl and the only one still with us today, Inge Borkh. There were others, including one more who reigned supreme with these four ladies, Leonie Rysanek, but it is chronology about which I am making note--Rysanek, a beloved artist of mine, was born in 1926. Birgit Nilsson was born in 1917 or 1918 (depending on the source), Astrid Varnay in 1918, Martha Moedl in 1912 and Inge Borkh in 1917. Again, all but Borkh are gone, while the magnificent vocal legacies of each woman remains.
These voices are the ones of a TRUE "golden age", wherein those who prepared them in the roles of Bruennhilde, Elektra, Isolde, the Dyer's Wife, Senta and Salome actually knew and worked with Richard Strauss and studied directly under the "disciples" of Richard Wagner. From the perspective of vocal power and glamor, and from the first-hand experience they had with their assumption of these parts, they will never be equalled.
While I revel in the voices of the others, my very first hearing of Richard Strauss's opera, Elektra -- my favorite of all operas -- was not, as some think, in the performances of the very first opera I attended at the Metropolitan Opera House (an Elektra for the ages with Birgit Nilsson and Leonie Rysanek in the 1979-1980 season), but Dr. Karl Boehm's magnificent Deutsche Grammophon recording of the work with the Staatskapelle Dresden. On that recording, the Elektra was Inge Borkh. To this day, the power, openness, freshness and beauty of Borkh's voice remain the same experience. Every recording I've heard (both studio recorded and "live") of this incredible artist -- from the earlier parts of her career in the 1950s to the latter parts in the 1970s -- remained consistent... a rarity. In addition to the Strauss and Wagner parts, her undertaking of the title role of Turandot in Puccini's opera, on a Decca recording with Mario del Monaco and Renata Tebaldi, is similarly breathtaking.
Although I am only in my early-mid-40s, I heard Nilsson live and Varnay live at the very end of their careers, and Moedl sang in Vienna into the 1990s. This where the chronology is directly affecting... All were alive in my lifetime, all sang in my lifetime, all, once again, but one are no longer on this planet.
I SALUTE, with the deepest of respect, Mme. Borkh, the last, still vital being in a unique line--one equal to the others in every way.
Inge Borkh in Richard Strauss's Die Frau Ohne Schatten (from YouTube):
Inge Borkh in a 1990s interview -- how beautiful she still was at almost 80! -- and a scene from Bloch's Macbeth (also from YouTube):
