The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Addio, Assoluta: On the death of the century soprano Edita Gruberova

2021-10-18T20:16:02.882Z


It is a beacon that nobody expected: The opera world has lost the last Assoluta with Edita Gruberova. An obituary.


It is a beacon that nobody expected: The opera world has lost the last Assoluta with Edita Gruberova.

An obituary.

Everyone had their Gruberova moment. It could be a role, an evening, an encounter, sometimes just a tone, for which the native Slovak woman fell for. The laughter of her Zerbinetta in Strauss' “Ariadne”, which merged in an inimitable way with the outrageous coloratura. The vocal tightrope act in the big scene of Donizetti's “Lucia di Lammermoor”, where madness, despair and the cry for love became one in a startling way. Or the finale in Donizetti's “Roberto Devereux”, in which England's Queen said goodbye to office and life, one last time, fully conscious of renunciation, rebelled against fate.

The latter part became her farewell role from the opera stage in March 2019. Perhaps that was even the best role of Edita Gruberova, here, in the Munich National Theater, where she was so poignantly true in Christof Loy's staging because, in addition to her impressive vocal art, she was so touchingly true of himself revealed.

An aging queen who vainly vies for a young lover and loses her power: Even today, anyone who was allowed to experience these scenes is still breathless.

The fact that Gruberova resigned from the stage in her adopted home of Zurich yesterday at the age of 74 was not only expected by no one, it is also a beacon: the opera world has lost its last diva, the Assoluta of our time.

Edita Gruberova wasn't actually a diva

Wherein Diva? That was exactly what Gruberova wasn't. Because she didn't get burned, didn't attract attention with quirks, quirks or airs. She wanted to be challenged by directors, as well as by her partners, by tenors who were often obtuse and asked them to come into the cloakroom for scenic tutoring. Above all, she forbade herself to do two things: stairs and steep inclines. After all, she used to lament in her Slavic singsong, hardly any of these directors and set designers understood what a feat of strength singing was.

Edita Gruberova was not only a singer of the century who redefined the subject of coloratura soprano, she was also disarming to exhaustively professional.

Because that is also a Gruberova moment: When, for a conversation that you would have liked to have had with her, she pulled out her scribbled appointment book to look for a vacancy - and you could be sure: four months later, at 3 p.m., she would appear in the cafe, not a minute too late.

There was an artist beyond the cheering tsunamis

Gruberova lacked a lot for a glamorous diva. After the performances, she loved a glass of beer, not a bubbly. She could be hilarious when she talked about her colleagues, of course only when the recorder was switched off. And her grumbling laugh was often just as impressive as her vocal summit storms.

Maybe she was so normal and grounded because she had to endure a lot of setbacks. The alcoholic and bad father. The flight from her home country to Vienna, where she was initially fobbed off with mini-parts at the State Opera there. Her husband's suicide. The children she had to leave alone during the forays through the international opera temples and the feelings of guilt that came with them. Of course, she said in the moments when she looked deeply, there was this tendency towards the "Slavic depression". So there was, what many only suspected, another Gruberova beyond the cheering tsunamis after the Lucias, Anna Bolenas or Constances.

As far as her career is concerned, the waiting time at the Vienna State Opera was ultimately her luck - although she had previously attracted tremendous attention for her stage debut in Bratislava as Rosina in “The Barber of Seville” in February 1968.

Only in this way was Gruberova able to mature from the Mozart roles of a Queen of the Night, for example, whom she sang countless times, to the tragic heroines of Donizetti and Bellini.

Gruberova reinvented the Belcanto

With these interpretations, Gruberova reinvented the belcanto. Because she understood and demonstrated that all the decorations are not just an end in themselves and exhibit for vain singers, but are dramatically motivating. A vocal grammar that questioned every word, every tone and announced that these tragedies were torn apart, something that Gruberova could perhaps best feel herself. So it may be that bel canto divas like Gruberova are so good because feeling the game was just as important as the technical mastery: A point of contact, possibly the only one with Callas, who is otherwise poled so differently.

It was difficult for Edita Gruberova to quit, even if she did not fully admit it to herself. She needed the audience as much as we needed her. With some games like Bellini's Norma, she pushed her limits. And sometimes it seemed as if she was inspired by just one goal: half a century on stage. In the end there were 51 incomparable, unrepeatable, glorious years.

The fact that Gruberova was still better than most of her colleagues in this subject in the end was her very personal triumph.

And the fact that she chose the queen from “Roberto Devereux” for the opera farewell in 2019 reveals a lot about her self-image.

It was kind of an unspoken reflection.

Elisabeth I said “Non regno, non vivo” in the finale, “I don't rule, I don't live”.

As if it's only about this world: Edita Gruberova will continue to rule in the opera world.

Source: merkur

All life articles on 2021-10-18

You may like

News/Politics 2024-03-28T09:36:32.596Z
Life/Entertain 2024-02-29T22:03:54.272Z

Trends 24h

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.