Frederica von Stade
While Von Stade's sweet, lyrical timbre is eminently suitable for the more gentle heroines, she was also delightfully coltish yet still aristocratic as Cherubino, her most famous role, and other trouser roles such as Massenet's Cherubin, Hansel, and Octavian, a spunky Rosina, and she even created the role of the utterly villainous Marquise de Merteuil in Conrad Susa and Philip Littell's The Dangerous Liaisons. She specializes in Mozart, Rossini, and nineteenth century French repertoire, but she also sings Monteverdi, Rameau, and Richard Strauss, the mezzo version of Bellini's La Sonnambula, French chanson, and German lieder, as well as jazz and musical theater songs.
While her family had produced a few professional and amateur musicians, including a great-aunt who sang at the Opera Comique, Von Stade became an opera singer almost by chance, when in 1966, she enrolled in the Mannes School of Music as a part-time student, to learn to read music for her own enjoyment. Recognizing her potential talent, the faculty encouraged her to enroll full-time, and during her second year, she began studies with Sebastian Engelberg, who taught her technique and taught her how to open an upper range she hadn't even known she possessed. In 1969, she auditioned for the Metropolitan Opera, though still uncertain that opera was the career for her, and was immediately offered a three-year contract. While most of her roles were small parts, including her 1970 debut role as the Third Boy in Die Zauberflöte, she did sing the occasional lead. One of those lead roles was Cherubino, and Rolf Liebermann, who was in attendance that night, offered her the role for the Paris Opera for a 1973 performance that began a long-standing association with the Paris Opera and French music. Cherubino was also her debut role at the Glyndebourne Festival the same year, and at Salzburg the next year. In 1976, she and her then-husband and voice teacher Peter Elkus, moved to Paris, and she also made her La Scala debut as Berlioz's Marguerite in La Damnation de Faust. In 1985, she encountered personal and some vocal problems when she and Elkus stopped working together, and in 1990 divorced.
She was always careful in building her repertoire, never pushing her voice further than Octavian in Rosenkavalier, which she added to her repertoire in 1976, or Charlotte in Werther, which she took on in 1980. Some of the roles she added were ones written for her, such as Tina in Dominick Argento's The Aspern Papers. She also dropped some of her most beloved roles, including Cherubino in 1992 and Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia in 1994, when she felt that she was no longer the youngster that the roles demanded, and that there were plenty of other mezzos to take on those roles.
While she never recorded Rosina, one of her finer roles, she made a number of excellent recordings. Her Songs of the Auvergne (Sony) are a model of grace and simplicity, and while her physical portrayal of the adolescent aristocrat Cherubino of course cannot be captured on a sound-only medium, her recording of Le Nozze di Figaro with Solti (Decca) is a delight, and for many, her Mélisande with Karajan (EMI) is the best on record.
© TiVo
-
Frederica von Stade: Faure Melodies
Classica - Pubblicato da Warner Classics il 1 gen 1982
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro
José Van Dam, Mirella Freni, Frederica von Stade
Opera - Pubblicato da Opera d'Oro il 1 gen 2003
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler: Symphony No. 4 in G Major & Songs of a Wayfarer
Yoel Levi, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Frederica von Stade
Classica - Pubblicato da Telarc il 1 giu 1999
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Frederica von Stade Sings Chants d'Auvergne
Classica - Pubblicato da Sony Classical il 22 apr 2016
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler : Symphony No.4
Frederica von Stade, Wiener Philharmonic Orchestra, Claudio Abbado
Classica - Pubblicato da Deutsche Grammophon (DG) il 8 giu 2016
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Massenet: Werther
Classica - Pubblicato da Decca Music Group Ltd. il 1 gen 1981
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Bernstein: On The Town (Live)
Frederica von Stade, Thomas Hampson, London Symphony Orchestra, Michael Tilson Thomas
Classica - Pubblicato da Deutsche Grammophon (DG) il 1 gen 1993
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Frederica von Stade Sings Mahler Lieder
Classica - Pubblicato da Sony Classical il 22 apr 2016
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Dead Man Walking
Joyce DiDonato, Philip Cutlip, Frederica von Stade, Patrick Summers, Houston Grand Opera Orchestra
Opera - Pubblicato da Parlophone Records Limited il 2 apr 2012
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Frederica von Stade - Collaborations
Classica - Pubblicato da Sony Classical il 22 apr 2016
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Berlioz: Les nuits d'été, Op. 7, H 81 - Debussy: La damoiselle élue, L. 62
Classica - Pubblicato da Sony Classical il 22 apr 2016
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Argento: Casa Guidi - Capriccio, "Rossini in Paris" - In Praise of Music (Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Dominick Argento)
Classica - Pubblicato da Reference Recordings CD il 30 set 2003
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Frederica von Stade Sings Offenbach Arias and Overtures
Classica - Pubblicato da Sony Classical il 10 ott 1995
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Portrait of Frederica von Stade
Classica - Pubblicato da Sony Classical il 5 mag 1985
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
French Opera Arias
Classica - Pubblicato da Sony Classical il 22 apr 2016
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler: Songs of a Wayfarer / Ruckertlieder / Two songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn
Classica - Pubblicato da Sony Classical il 22 apr 2016
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Across Your Dreams: Frederica von Stade Sings Brubeck
Frederica von Stade, Chris Brubeck, Bill Crofut
Classica - Pubblicato da Telarc il 1 lug 1996
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Frederica von Stade Sings Cantaloube Chants
Classica - Pubblicato da Sony Classical il 1 gen 1986
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Lieder (Live)
Frederica von Stade, Martin Katz
Classica - Pubblicato da Orfeo il 22 ott 2012
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Rodgers & Hart: Songs from the Shows
John McGlinn, Frederica von Stade
Classica - Pubblicato da Warner Classics il 15 ott 1990
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler: Songs of a Wayfarer / Ruckertlieder / Two songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn
Classica - Pubblicato da Sony Classical il 22 apr 2016
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo