“Elektra” on the Berlin State Opera: Waltraud Meier’s acclaimed farewell to the stage

As quickly because the final observe had light away on Friday within the State Opera, a tumult broke out that’s in any other case solely recognized from the Bayreuth Competition: Bravos and a burst of applause, hooting, approving whistles, stamping toes. The corridor goes wild after a unprecedented efficiency of Richard Strauss’ historical drama “Elektra” – however above all of the folks have fun a singer: Waltraud Meier, who’s ending her stage profession after 47 years.

Bouquets of roses fly over the orchestra pit, Matthias Glander, the principal clarinetist of the Staatskapelle, praises the singer’s at all times pleasant collegiality, says: “You’re one in every of us!”, inventive director Matthias Schulz praises her because the “singer of the century”. And he’s not exaggerating: with a uncommon mixture of charisma and musical intelligence, she has thrilled generations of classical music followers. Waltraud Meier can create soul portraits from sounds – and likewise visually embody the characters created in a plausible method.

On the age of 20, she started her first engagement in 1976 within the theater in her hometown of Würzburg, adopted by stops in Mannheim and Dortmund. In 1983 she performed a sensationally sensual Kundry in Bayreuth, and the position in Wagner’s “Parsifal” turned her trademark. She sings the most important mezzo roles internationally, then switches to the extremely dramatic soprano, overwhelming as Isolde in Heiner Müller’s Bayreuth manufacturing of “Tristan”.

She has sung nearly a dozen roles on the Berlin State Opera since 1992, primarily beneath the route of Daniel Barenboim, who turned her shut inventive associate however was unable to attend her acclaimed finale resulting from sickness.

Anybody who sees Waltraud Meier as Clytemnestra on Friday, with exact appearing and singing, auratic charisma and impressively comprehensible textual content, wish to pay attention and watch her for years to come back. However she units the ultimate level in a self-determined method – and even on this emotional second stays a “whole murals of glamor and down-to-earthness,” as State Opera Director Schulz places it. She concludes her because of the viewers with the phrases: “I’ve nothing extra to say musically. Bye!”