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One of the most respected Wagnerian sopranos of the mid-twentieth century, Astrid Varnay was born in Stockholm, Sweden, the child of two celebrated Hungarian singers. After spending her infancy in Norway where her father had been engaged as a stage director in Kristiania, she moved with her parents to Buenos Aires and the Teatro Colón; finally, the family traveled on to the United States. After her father died tragically shortly before his 35th birthday, Varnay's mother turned to teaching in order to make ends meet, and Violet (as she was known then) eventually became her most accomplished student.

Astrid Varnay made a surprise Metropolitan Opera debut as Sieglinde on December 6, 1941, when the great Lotte Lehmann took ill and no other substitute was available. Varnay was already under contract for performances in the lighter Wagnerian soprano repertory beginning the following month, but her success in Die Walküre, broadcast nationwide, served notice that hers was a voice destined for larger roles. Just six days later, another indisposition put her on stage as Brünnhilde, an even greater challenge.

With careful supervision from Met general manager Edward Johnson, Varnay's appearances were rationed to prevent her from becoming a vocal casualty. The rigorous training she had received from her mother assured that a technique was in place to serve her well in the heaviest repertory. Beyond strong and confident singing was a histrionic aptitude that marked her as an exceptional actress. With a trim and agile figure, she moved with an ease and sense of purpose that set her apart from her contemporaries.

With the end of WWII, Varnay traveled to other venues. Her Isolde in London in 1948 prompted critic Ernest Newman to write that hers was one of the best sung and acted interpretations he had encountered in his long memory. When Kirsten Flagstad declined to sing at the Bayreuth Festival about to reopen in 1951, she suggested Varnay instead; the grandsons of Richard Wagner engaged her unseen and unheard. Her stunning performances in the minimalist productions of Wieland Wagner set new standards in opera performance, prompting the director to say, "Why do I need a tree on the stage when I have Astrid Varnay?"

Varnay was to be a mainstay at Bayreuth for 17 seasons. Although she made few studio recordings, live performances reveal a huge instrument of enormous depth (putting many a contralto to shame) with a top register of lacerating thrust and power. Her legendary Götterdämmerung Brünnhilde, recorded under conductor Hans Knappertsbusch in 1951 but not issued due to artist contract obstacles, was finally released to thunderous acclaim in 1999. Varnay's stature as sovereign singer and actress was confirmed in every measure of the exhausting role.

During the early 1950s, Varnay became increasingly aware of Met general manager Rudolf Bing's indifference to Wagner and turned her attention to other theatres in Europe: Maggio Musicale in Florence, Paris, La Scala, Salzburg (where she was an overwhelming Elektra) and Munich.

After three decades of singing the dramatic soprano repertory, Varnay gradually entered the realm of parts customarily sung by mezzo-sopranos. As she entered her mid-sixties, she then moved into cameo roles, brief appearances imbued with all the care and perception brought to her heroic repertory of earlier times.

Varnay's autobiography, written with Donald Arthur, was published in November 2000 under the title 55 Years in Five Acts: My Life in Opera. Her intelligence, perception, good humor, and generosity to fellow artists attest to why she was regarded as the best of colleagues.

Fourteen years younger than Danish heldentenor Lauritz Melchior, Set Svanholm moved into much of the same repertory in the 1940s, making himself even more important to companies offering large measures of Wagner. Instead of Melchior's immense physical presence, Svanholm offered a much slighter appearance. His slender and athletic build served him well in most pairings, save those with such sizeable ladies as Helen Traubel and Kirsten Flagstad. A plangent sound, not infrequently hard-edged, and a growing tendency to slide into notes rather than attacking them forthrightly prevented his reaching the vocal plateau occupied routinely by Melchior. Still, during his prime years, he was often the next best thing and, periodically, an artist of distinction. A little short of true heroic tenor amplitude, his voice nonetheless had sufficient cutting power to be heard through Wagner's thickest scoring.

Like Melchior, Svanholm began his singing career as a baritone. Following organ lessons from his father, a Lutheran minister, Svanholm prepared for a teaching position and actually served a school near his home for a two-year period. Wishing to deepen his musical knowledge, he performed a series of organ recitals to amass the financial means to do so. At 23, he entered the Stockholm Conservatory, initially devoting himself to counterpoint, composition, and piano. When he entered the voice class of famous (and demanding) Swedish baritone John Forsell, he found himself in the company of three other students: Jussi Björling, Joel Berglund, and a young lady who would later become his wife.

After completing his course work, Svanholm pursued church music as both a singer and a director. In 1930, he made his debut with the Stockholm Opera in the baritone role of Silvio. Singing as a baritone for several years, he finally yielded to his wife's insistence that he was really a tenor and retired for re-training. In 1936, he returned to the stage as Radames in a performance heard by Bruno Walter. Without delay, Walter engaged Svanholm for the Vienna Staatsoper where his debut as Siegmund was acclaimed and quickly led to other offers. Graz, Munich, and Prague heard him in quick succession, as did Salzburg (1938), Milan (1942), and Bayreuth, where he sang Erik and both Siegfrieds in 1942. Throughout this period, he remained a member of his home company, offering Stockholm audiences both Wagner and an assortment of other dramatic roles, ranging from Enée to Peter Grimes. A planned 1940 - 1941 American debut was postponed by WWII, but Svanholm finally arrived at the Metropolitan Opera in November 1946 after having appeared in both San Francisco (September) and Chicago (October).

Svanholm was assessed as an above-average Lohengrin in San Francisco, joined with Helen Traubel in Chicago for a Tristan und Isolde of "exalted emotion," and was appreciated for his limber figure as the young Siegfried in his Metropolitan debut. Further comments described his singing as reliable in most roles, if not really satisfactory for Radames. Svanholm remained at the Metropolitan for ten seasons, singing mostly Wagner and Strauss along with the occasional odd role such as Eisenstein in Die Fledermaus. A London debut during the 1948 - 1949 season found Svanholm praised for his boyish-appearing young Siegfried, less so for a Tristan found lacking in poetry. He remained with Covent Garden through 1954. In 1956, Svanholm was made director of the Stockholm Opera, a post he retained until 1963.

Born in America to Swedish-American parents, mezzo-soprano Blanche Thebom was among the select number of American singers who grew into major careers at the Metropolitan Opera under the management of Edward Johnson. The attractive young singer found opportunities at the country's leading opera house due in large measure to WWII's stopping the supply of experienced artists from making their way to America during those years. Unlike many others, Thebom was sufficiently gifted and well enough prepared to turn opportunity into an enduring career, making herself a valuable company member for more than two decades.

After her family moved to Canton, OH, when she was still a girl, Thebom began singing in a church choir and participated in a school performance of Flotow's Martha. Financial hardships within her family obliged her to seek employment as a secretary, while still performing occasionally at weddings and in various church choirs. When she traveled with her parents to Sweden in 1938, she was invited to perform at a ship's concert. Also aboard the Kungsholm was Kosti Vehanen, then accompanist to Marian Anderson; impressed, he informed the young singer that she should undertake serious study and plan for a career as a professional singer. When she returned to the United States, Thebom found that her employer was willing to provide financial assistance and she began a period of concentrated instruction. She was able to study with such prominent teachers as Lothar Wallerstein and former soprano Edyth Walker. In addition to work on voice production and repertory, she was also trained in languages and stagecraft.

An audition in 1940 led to her being given a contract by impresario Sol Hurok. A recital debut in Sheboygan, WI, was followed in a month's time by her first orchestral appearance. Performing Brahms' Alto Rhapsody with no less an orchestra and conductor than the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy, she began a year devoted to touring the States in recital, interspersing occasional appearances in orchestral concerts. In January 1944, her New York Town Hall recital brought several complimentary reviews. That summer, she appeared in the motion picture, When Irish Eyes are Smiling, an engagement facilitated by her poise, fine voice and good looks. November 1944 brought her Metropolitan Opera debut during a Philadelphia visit. Her Brangäne there was followed in December by her first appearance in the Metropolitan's home in New York, this time as Fricka in Die Walküre. Praised for both her fine voice and her stage sense, Thebom began an association with the company which would be her principal home for 22 seasons.

While pressed initially into the Wagnerian wing, Thebom gradually made her mark in the Italian and French repertories as well, ranging to such roles as Marina and Orlofsky (in Fledermaus). In San Francisco she first appeared in 1947 as Amneris; she then ventured overseas, first to Sweden where she was a guest artist for the Stockholm Opera's Golden Jubilee, and, later, to England's Glyndebourne Festival where her Dorabella was heard in 1950. Thebom retuned to Stockholm in 1956 to undertake her first soprano role, Elisabeth in Wagner's Tannhäuser, an experiment of limited success. In 1957, she was the Didon in Covent Garden's production of Berlioz's Les Troyens, where critics complained that, while dramatically striking, she was not in good voice.

Following her retirement, Thebom taught and involved herself with a school in California devoted to preparing young singers for early entrance into professional careers.

Heroic tenor James McCracken achieved international fame in the heaviest tenor repertory; unusually, he did this only after leaving the famed Metropolitan Opera, where he felt his career had stalled in comprimario roles. Taking leave of the Metropolitan in 1957, he was engaged at Bonn and steadily made his way forward singing dramatic roles; this trend eventually culminated in Otello, which served as his reintroduction to America in 1960 at the Washington Opera. Unlike many heroic tenors, who often begin their careers as baritones, McCracken's voice was placed in the tenor range from the very beginning, and he took pride in the fact that he sang the high Cs in Il trovatore, eschewing the transposition that many spinto-weight singers take for granted. A singer of stupendous intensity, his vocal approach sounded highly pressurized, but his voice remained undiminished right to the time of his death at age 61. Clearly, as he himself insisted, he had been singing correctly; otherwise, his voice could not have remained fresh and secure in such a punishing repertory.

McCracken studied at Columbia University and sang on Broadway during that period. His principal voice teacher was Wellington Ezekiel. While his debut took place as Rodolfo in a 1952 production of La bohème in Central City, CO, his Metropolitan Opera contract kept him in an unending string of small roles. From his first Met performance as Parpignol (La Bohème) on November 21, 1953, he progressed little and, after four seasons, departed for Europe to pursue the repertory for which his large voice was suited. In Bonn, he sang Canio, Max (Der Freischütz), and Radames. His protagonist in Washington's 1960 production of Otello attracted worldwide attention. Later that year, he sang the role in Vienna and Zurich and returned triumphantly to the Metropolitan in 1963 as the jealous Moor. London heard his Otello in 1964 and thereafter, he continued to enjoy an active European career.

Counting those performance amassed as a minor singer in his first four seasons, McCracken sang more than 400 performances at the Metropolitan from 1963 on, always in the dramatic or heroic repertories. Among the Canios, Samsons, Manricos, Calafs, and appearances as Radames and Tannhäuser were two striking productions of exceptional interest. When Leonard Bernstein conducted Carmen with Marilyn Horne in 1972, McCracken was his José and the production was subsequently recorded. When Meyerbeer's sprawling Le prophète was revived in 1977 after decades of neglect, McCracken was assigned the title role, Jean de Leyde, in a cast including Horne, Renata Scotto, and Jerome Hines. While many felt in advance that the tenor's technical approach would be too strenuous, in fact he sang the role with both power and a good measure of elegance, employing falsetto for some soft, high-lying passages. This production, too, was recorded and has remained in the catalog ever since. McCracken spoke freely about his vocal technique. He insisted that, despite the explosive sound he produced, he attacked notes gently. During the decade before his death, he worked with Joyce McLaine in New York, noting that he had grown increasingly aware of keeping all the physical elements in alignment. Wisely, he limited his Wagner roles, realizing that these would pull down the center of his voice and cost him his spectacular top register. Together with his wife, mezzo soprano Sandra Warfield, McCracken sang numerous recitals, particularly during the latter part of his career.

Jerome Hines was one of the best known and most durable of American bass-baritones, known for his rich, powerful, unforced voice and his psychologically penetrating acting performances.

Jerome Albert Link Heinz (as he was born) loved singing but was turned down by his junior high school glee club because his voice didn't blend.

He studied at the University of California Los Angeles, with a degree in science, having taken chemistry, physics, and mathematics. He taught chemistry at UCLA for a year, then worked as a chemist for an oil company.

However, while he had been at UCLA he took singing lessons from Gennaro Curci, and at the age of 20 debuted at the San Francisco Opera in 1941; during that season he sang as Monterone in Verdi's Rigoletto and in Tannhäuser. After that, he was invited to sing with several orchestras, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and with the New Orleans Opera, which convinced him to concentrate on singing as his career. He won the Caruso Award in 1946, resulting in his Metropolitan Opera audition and debut in 1947 as The Sergeant in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov. Irving Kolodin's review made as much mention of his tall height as of his "able singing." In December, he was given the role of Méphistophélès in Gounod's Faust. The New York Times judged that the role was "still somewhat beyond him" but praised his singing ability and said that "much can be expected" of him.

He soon proved himself a reliable comprimario singer the next season, appearing 45 times in ten roles, including the Grand Inquisitor in Don Carlos, Don Basilio in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, the Commendatore in Don Giovanni, and Nick Swallow in Peter Grimes. He also appeared in these years in Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, and Mexico City. His reputation soared when he was selected by conductor Arturo Toscanini to sing some of his concerts and appear in his 1953 recording of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis.

Also in 1953 he made major European appearances at the Glyndebourne and Edinburgh Festivals.

Complications in his career development arose in 1951, when the Montreal-born American bass-baritone George London appeared at the Met. With the presence of London, Hines, and Ezio Pinza -- singers so great that in a later day they would surely have been marketed as the "Three Basses" -- it took Hines a few more years before he moved out of roles like the Grand Inquisitor and the Sergeant into the leading roles, like Philip II and Boris himself.

In the mid-1950s, he added the major Wagnerian bass-baritone parts to his repertoire, including Gurnemanz, King Marke, and Wotan, all of which he sang at Bayreuth. In 1962, he became the second American singer to portray Boris Godunov at the Bolshoi Opera in Moscow; George London had preceded him in 1960.

Hines went on to sing 45 roles in hundreds of performances at the Metropolitan. He holds the record for the most consecutive seasons there by any major artist at 41. His last appearance was on January 24, 1987 as Sparafucile in Rigoletto.

He was a highly religious man who is reputed to have walked out of a production at the Met due to his objections over the "lewd" qualities of the choreography. He wrote an opera, I Am the Way, on the life of Christ. His autobiography, This is my Story, this is my Song, was published in 1968, and he wrote two highly regarded books on the art of singing, Great Singers on Great Singing (1982) and The Four Voices of Man (1997).

One of the great unsung conductors of the middle twentieth century, Rudolf Kempe enjoyed a strong reputation in England but never quite achieved the international acclaim that he might have had with more aggressive management, promotion, and recording. Not well enough known to be a celebrity but too widely respected to count as a cult figure, Kempe is perhaps best remembered as a connoisseur's conductor, one valued for his strong creative temperament rather than for any personal mystique.

He studied oboe as a child, performed with the Dortmund Opera, and, in 1929, barely out of his teens, he became first oboist of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. His conducting debut came in 1936, at the Leipzig Opera; this performance of Lortzing's Der Wildschütz was so successful that the Leipzig Opera hired him as a répétiteur. Kempe served in the German army during World War II, but much of his duty was out of the line of fire; in 1942 he was assigned to a music post at the Chemnitz Opera. After the war, untainted by Nazi activities, he returned to Chemnitz as director of the opera (1945-1948), and then moved on to the Weimar National Theater (1948-1949). From 1949 to 1953 he served as general music director of the Staatskapelle Dresden, East Germany's finest orchestra. He then moved to the identical position at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, 1952-1954, succeeding the young and upwardly mobile Georg Solti. During this period he was also making guest appearances outside of Germany, mainly in opera: in Vienna (1951), at London's Covent Garden (1953), and at New York's Metropolitan Opera (1954), to mention only the highlights. Although he conducted Wagner extensively, especially at Covent Garden, Kempe did not make his Bayreuth debut until 1960. As an opera conductor he was greatly concerned with balance and texture, and singers particularly appreciated his efforts on their behalf.

Kempe made a great impression in England, and in 1960 Thomas Beecham named him associate conductor of London's Royal Philharmonic. Kempe became the orchestra's principal conductor upon Beecham's death the following year, and, after the orchestra was reorganized, served as its artistic director from 1963 to 1975. He was also the chief conductor of the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra from 1965 to 1972, and of the Munich Philharmonic from 1967 until his death in 1976. During the last year of his life he also entered into a close association with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Interpretively, Kempe was something of a German Beecham. He was at his best -- lively, incisive, warm, expressive, but never even remotely self-indulgent -- in the Austro-Germanic and Czech repertory. Opera lovers prize his versions of Lohengrin, Die Meistersinger, and Ariadne auf Naxos. His greatest recorded legacy, accomplished during the last four or five years of his life, was the multi-volume EMI set of the orchestral works and concertos of Richard Strauss, performed with the highly idiomatic Dresden Staatskapelle. These recordings were only intermittently available outside of Europe in the LP days, but in the 1990s EMI issued them on nine compact discs.

The Chorus of the Metropolitan Opera has been instrumental in the establishment and continuation of excellence that has marked the Met as one of the premier opera houses in the world. With a flexible roster of professional singers, the Chorus is able to adapt to meet the demands of one of the integral parts of opera performance since the genre's birth. With the Met's continued outreach and ability to incorporate new media, the Chorus has been heard on hundreds of recordings and seen by audiences around the world on video, including a groundbreaking live-broadcast stream to movie theaters.

The Metropolitan Opera was founded in 1883 after an effort led by New York's Roosevelt, Morgan, and Vanderbilt families to establish a world-class company. Right from the start, the new company was a success, and its Orchestra and Chorus have remained vital to its mission. Auguste Vianesi was the company's first music director, and a long list of notable names have followed, including Arturo Toscanini, Bruno Walter, and James Levine, among many others. The role of chorus master of the Metropolitan Opera Chorus has also been held by a distinguished list, most notably Kurt Adler, who held this title, as well as that of principal conductor for a time, from 1943 until 1973.

The Metropolitan Opera has been on the leading edge of technology practically since its founding. In the first years of the 20th century, around 140 recordings of the Met were made on phonograph cylinders, named the Mapleson Cylinders, between 1901 and 1903. In 1910, the company began broadcasting, with live performances transmitted to a relatively nearby area. However, in the 1930s, these live productions were broadcast nationally by several major networks and eventually by the Met itself on its Metropolitan Opera Radio Network. Similarly, with the advent and wider preponderance of television, the Met began broadcasting live performances to households in the 1940s while also dabbling in distributions to movie theaters. These traditions have continued and evolved with technology and, as of the early 2020s, include live performances simulcast in high definition to movie theaters, taped performances broadcast on television, a dedicated streaming radio station, and a litany of well-regarded recordings. Yannick Nézet-Séguin has served as the Met's music director since 2018, and as of 2023, Donald Palumbo held the title of chorus master. ~ Keith Finke

New York's Metropolitan Opera Orchestra dates back as an established ensemble almost to the Metropolitan Opera's founding in the 1880s. The orchestra has been led by legendary conductors of the 20th and 21st centuries, including Arturo Toscanini, George Szell, and James Levine.

New York upper-crust families launched an effort to establish a world-class opera company in 1880, and the Metropolitan Opera was launched with the 1883-1884 season. August Vianesia was the music director but was soon replaced in 1886 by Anton Seidl, a protégé of Wagner who molded the orchestra into a first-class group along German lines before departing in 1897. Other important early conductors included Alfred Hertz, Gustav Mahler (1908-1910), and Toscanini, who headed the orchestra from 1908 to 1915. Orchestra members by the 1930s earned starting salaries of some $10,000, less than the superstar singers the company engaged but more than what most other orchestras paid, and ever since then, a seat in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra has been a plum assignment for orchestral musicians.

Through the middle of the 20th century and beyond, the Metropolitan Opera was led by European-born conductors who were also prominent in the field of orchestral music, including Szell, Bruno Walter (1941-1951), Fritz Reiner, Erich Leinsdorf, and Dmitri Mitropoulos. The company pioneered operatic broadcasts on radio (from 1930) and television (from 1940), which arguably increased the prominence of the orchestra since audiences experienced no visual component; broadcasts, now including those via the Internet, have remained important to the Met's mission. Doubtless, the most significant of the orchestra's more recent conductors has been James Levine, whose career ended under a cloud but who shaped bold interpretations, many of them in part orchestrally based, for decades. Levine was succeeded by Fabio Luisi and by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, music director since 2018. The orchestra has issued several recordings independent of operatic productions, including one of Wagner's orchestral music and, in 2022, A Concert for Ukraine. ~ James Manheim