The Distinguished Eleanor Steber
Leading Soprano, The Metropolitan Opera
(Born Wheeling, West Virginia, 17 July 1916 - Died Langhorne, Pennsylvania. 3 October 1990) was an American opera singer.
She sang at the Metropolitan Opera from 1940 to 1961, a career chiefly distinguished for the high-lying soprano roles of Richard Strauss, and Mozart heroines as well. She was quite versatile, singing Wagner, Alban Berg, some French opera, the world premiere of the American opera Vanessa by Samuel Barber and a number of Metropolitan Opera premieres, including Strauss’s Arabella, Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio), and Berg's Wozzeck.
Of erratic temperament, she could indulge in life’s pleasures to an extreme, and gradually developed a reputation for hard-living; some would argue lifestyle took a toll on her voice, and indeed on occasion she could plainly be over-tired and out of form. In the late 1940s she made a brilliant success of the Mozart Figaro Countess at the Edinburgh Festival, so much so that HMV Records engaged her to come to their studios after the Festival to record Mozart and other popular arias. By the account of Walter Süsskind, the conductor of both the Edinburgh performances and the proposed recordings, she arrived at the Abbey Road Studios not feeling well and admitted to having partied most of the night. She could not sing her standard arias, saying “I don’t feel like singing that.” Süsskind, trying to save the recording session, responded, “What do you feel like singing?” Steber thought for a moment and said,“Let’s try ‘Depuis le jour’ (Louise)...” Orchestra parts were found and the disc was cut in one take. It became a famous recording, revealing, especially in the arching opening pages, a quite beautiful vocal line and quality.
Her career was often marked by incidents such as this, including the summer of 1953 at the Bayreuth Wagner Festival, where her performances of Elsa in Lohengrin were highly acclaimed, her personal deportment in society much less so. Even so, she stands as one of America’s greatest native-born and trained operatic sopranos. Her many recordings are still available, as are audio and visual tapes of her radio and television broadcasts for the Voice of Firestone. No survey of American opera singing is complete without serious attention to Steber.
She died on 3 October 1990 in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, following heart valve surgery.
Discography
Eleanor
Steber sings Richard Strauss; VAI Audio; Karl Böhm (1st work), James
Levine (2nd work, encore), conductors. Recorded: Munich, June 4, 1953,
(1st work); Cleveland, May 5, 1970 (2nd work, encore)
Eleanor
Steber sings Mozart - Selections Voice of Firestone; VAI Audio; Robert
Lawrence (1st-6th works), Wilfred Pelletier (7th) or Howard Barlow
(8th-10th), conductor. Recorded Apr., 1960 (1st-6th works); from Voice
of Firestone radio broadcasts, 1946-1952 (remainder).
Eleanor
Steber, her first recordings (1940); VAI Audio; Wilfrid Pelletier,
conductor; Recorded May 30-31, 1940 and June 25-26, 1940, Town Hall,
New York City; and June 17, 1940, Academy of Music, Philadelphia.
The
Eleanor Steber collection. Vol. 1, the early career, 1938-1951; Armand
Tokatyan (3rd and 5th works); George Cehanovsky (6th work); Leonard
Warren (6th work); Recorded 1938-1951.
Vanessa; RCA Victor
Gold Seal; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus ; Dmitri
Mitropoulos, conductor; Recorded February and April 1958 in Manhattan
Center.
Madama Butterfly; Sony Classical (Columbia
originally); Jean Madeira, Suzuki ; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and
Chorus; "1949 Metropolitan Opera Association Production".
Eleanor Steber: an autobiography with Marcia Sloat; Wordsworth, 1992.
He loves me when I sing: remembering Eleanor Steber; Judith Buffington and other friends; Cottrell Printing, 1993.
Steber,
Eleanor by Martin Bernheimer, in 'The New Grove Dictionary of Opera',
ed. Stanley Sadie (London, 1992) ISBN 0-333-73432-7
Peter G. Davis in his book American Opera Singers offers a fine portrait of Steber.
