"Theater helps people keep sane"

On this day in 1957 soprano Martha Môdl made her Metropolitan Opera debut as the Siegfried Brunnhilde.

“G.S.”

Martha Moedl, who sang for the first time at the Metropolitan Opera House Wednesday night in Richard Wagner’s Siegfried, made an unusually graceful Brünnhilde. She achieved the difficult feat of raising herself with no apparent effort from being almost flat on her back, first to a sitting position with arms curving up and then to a standing position, while the orchestra played several pages of music.

But her singing was not quite as successful. While her first notes – very important in this scene – were pleasing, a few of her highest later tones were harsh and unsure. Her voice is almost contralto-like in quality and possibly the part is a bit high for her. Or the natural nervousness attendant upon a debut may have caused the trouble. Certainly the conditions she faced were difficult enough. During the final scenes (often the very best) of Wagner’s operas at the Met there are always rivulets of people in the audience hurrying out to catch trains and buses to the suburbs. For a girl from central Europe; where Wagner is treated more respectfully, those streams of seemingly dissatisfied customers must be a shattering experience.

Birthday anniversaries of conductor and composer Walter Damrosch (1862), bass Georg Hann (1897), bass-baritone Benno Kusche (1916), conductor Jaroslav Krombholc (1918) and composer Mitch Leigh and Broadway producer Hal Prince (both 1928)

Happy 84th birthday tenor Ernesto Veronelli, 71st birthday soprano Mara Zampieri and 68th birthday countertenor Jochen Kowalski.