Varnay, Astrid (Ibolyka Maria)
Varnay, Astrid (Ibolyka Maria)
Varnay, Astrid (Ibolyka Maria), noted Swedish-born American soprano and mezzo-soprano; b. Stockholm (of Austro-Hungarian parents), April 25, 1918. Her parents were professional singers. She was taken to the U.S. in 1920, and began vocal studies with her mother; then studied with Paul Althouse, and with the conductor Hermann Weigert (1890-1955), whom she married in 1944. She made her debut as Sieglinde at the Metropolitan Opera in N.Y. (Dec. 6, 1941), substituting for Lotte Lehmann without rehearsal; appeared at the Metropolitan until 1956, and again from 1974 to 1976; her last performance there was in 1979. From 1962 she sang mezzo-soprano roles, appearing as Strauss’s Herodias and Clytemnestra and as Begbick in Weill’s Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny;however, she was best known for such Wagnerian roles as Isolde, Kundry, Senta, and Brünnhilde.
Bibliography
B. Wessling, A. V.(Bremen, 1965).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire