Eleanor Steber

I thought it the least I could do for such a diva. Besides, the bags weren't really too heavy for me to carry, even after having just sung Don Alfonso in several ensembles from Così fan tutte, from Brown Hall at the New England Conservatory to the Midtown Inn just two blocks uptown on Huntington Avenue. I was at least strong-appearing at twenty-three and wanted to look grateful to be in the master classes, and of course I was. And I had been warned that the diva suffered from asthma.

My own excellent and inspired teacher, Mark Pearson, chairman of the voice department, had been solely responsible for and fought for the idea of recruiting Eleanor Steber back to her alma mater,⁹ retired for some years from the Met and elsewhere, excepting of course that controversial comeback in New York,¹⁰ and he had the influence to get me into the classes intended more for graduate students. The backstage aspect of getting to know such a legend was a great temptation, so I hoped to observe and possibly to penetrate the charisma that surrounded this great soprano.¹¹ But the significant memories for me of Eleanor Steber, some twenty-five years later, are all of the persona that she managed to project in public, of a magnetic, enigmatic artist, and much less of the human being from Wheeling, West Virginia, who suffered from breathlessness when climbing stairs.

And such charisma: her particular, proud way of flowing onstage in Brown Hall that first day, to give an example. Her amazing, swept-up blond coiffure; her traveling hat with its outrageous single pheasant feather. I now think her allure was clearly most effective in front of an idolizing crowd: a gorgeous, ready smile that made her blue eyes twinkle as it raised her arched eyebrows; her red lips between those high cheeks, pursed as if about to announce a secret; and her spontaneous wit, alternately self-derisive or campy, yet always bound by a certain elegance and of course by her great intelligence.

An example of her fine musicianship was her mastery of the piano.¹² It answered all possible student questions of how she learned so many roles from Mozart to Wagner to Samuel Barber. Her languages were rooted in real experience: she could correct you in Italian or improvise the translation on a textual question from an aria not in her repertory. Speaking of languages, one should mention her excellent German in her debut as Elsa at Bayreuth, now available live on CD, or the approval rating she always brings from my French friends for her famous version of Les nuits d'été. She was strict about musical entrances and despised sloppiness.

During the classes I played a mute servant in the opening scene of Don Giovanni, just as the Commendatore has been killed. Or was I the dead Commendatore? It's of little importance. But I'll never forget the impression Steber made as the tragic, young Donna Anna, demonstrating stage action to the student soprano. She flowed from the side of the stage to up right, gasping to see the father whom we could all imagine covered in blood from her look of horror just before she emitted "Padre mio . . . mio caro padre." The singer with that unique, human yet divine voice conveyed the tragedy of the situation, the actress conveyed a lasting image with a singular gesture. I smile now to think of us all looking, mouths gaping open (even the cadaver) in her direction, yet all of us so in character in this perfectly composed scene.

She gave many such examples to the ravished crowd of teachers and students during the master classes at NEC. We heard that shimmering top that was so individual and unmistakable to us now from live recordings. Sometimes she would skip or approximate a passage, as if perhaps she was not up to her own standards. The musical intention was always clear, though, in any example. She [End...