Christa Ludwig

Christa Ludwig, mezzo-soprano, died on Saturday, age 93. She was the best of the best, one of the greatest of postwar singers, with a beautiful voice, temperament, sensitivity, musicality. She had it all and was outstanding in every repertory she sang: Mozart, Strauss, Wagner, Lieder. I have one oddity around that is...not...quite....right: a Rossini aria, in German, made during the years when you heard opera in the vernacular in many European countries. But of all her recordings that I know, that's the only even slightly off item. 

There are a couple of Immolations, delivered with such force and imagination that you realize that had she been a soprano, she would have been on the same lofty plateau as Varnay and Nilsson. Of course, you can tell this from her Brangäne, her Fricka, her Ortrud, her Dyer's Wife, and on and on; from her Mahler, especially on Klemperer's Das Lied von der Erde; her Mozart, where I first heard her on Klemperer's Magic Flute, as one of the Queen of the Night's ladies; as the Witch in Hansel und Gretel, which she said was her favorite role.

To my great regret, I never heard her live; she retired from opera around when I got seriously interested, and sang at San Francisco Opera only once anyway, in an early-70s Rosenkavalier. I'm grateful for her enormous recorded legacy, even though it's not the same.

RIP Christa Ludwig; you were one of the giants.