People Magazine, 1980
Teresa Stratas Is a Lulu, a Soprano Siren Who Wowed the Met and Mehta (among Many Men)
At 5' and 104 pounds, she doesn't seem to be of diva dimensions, but the blunt-speaking Teresa Stratas wasn't called "the Baby Callas" for nothing.
"Most opera singers are fat because they have to put a lot into their mouths to make up for all that comes out of them—they are very oral," theorizes Teresa. "But I'm not—I'm very sexual."
Yet one wonders when the petite Greek-Canadian would have time for lust in her life. At 40, Stratas has emerged as one of the most versatile and sought-after sopranos in the business. Even with tickets scaled up to $55, there are rarely empty seats at the Met these nights—but when Teresa sings there are none.
Her roles of late included both Marenka, the virginal catch in Smetana's The Bartered Bride, and Jenny, the hard-hearted harlot in the Brecht/Weill opera Mahagonny. On TV, Stratas keeps turning up as the court temptress in Strauss' Salomé and as the pious mother in Amahl and the Night Visitors. In last year's Paris premiere of Alban Berg's horror opera Lulu, she appeared in the title role of the rich, sadistic mistress who winds up a low slut, stabbed to death by Jack the Ripper. On that occasion, a flu-ridden Stratas sang full of antibiotics and anxieties.
"The director insisted that I be Lulu, and not act her," she recalls. "He knew there is a lot of her life in mine. That filled the performance with borderline schizophrenia."
She was born Anastasia Strataki on a dining room table in a Toronto tenement. "My mother tried to get rid of me," she has said, referring to the family's poverty. Teresa did the first singing she can remember at 5 for an audience of three sewer rats in the basement of the diner run by her immigrant parents. Pistol Packin' Mama was her aria until her mother broke up the show and whipped her. As a teenage torch singer in Toronto clubs, Teresa learned to hold the center of attention in rooms filled with drunks, a skill which still works for her, she notes, in opera houses. At 20, after studying three years at the Toronto Conservatory, Stratas sang Smoke Gets in Your Eyes on Arthur Godfrey's talent show, and a listener phoned to tell her she should try the Met. She did later that year.
At her audition Met manager Rudolf Bing asked her to do some Mozart, and she told him she didn't know any. That seemed odd, and Bing asked if she could sing Isolde. Nope. "Ask her to sing Tristan. She won't know the difference," she heard one of Bing's aides suggest. "At the time, of course, I didn't," she laughs. But she was an unusually fast study. The Met rushed her onstage one night to replace an ailing soprano as Liù in Turandot with Birgit Nilsson and Franco Corelli. "I was too dumb to be terrified," she said. The reviews were too good to believe.
Teresa Stratas during her first audition at the Met
In the mid-'60s she teamed up with conductor Zubin Mehta, after he left his first wife. The affair was stormy, and in time Stratas said he asked her to give up singing. "I just couldn't see myself going through life as Mrs. Conductor," she says. They split around 1967 and a couple of years later he married TV actress Nancy Kovack.
British poet Tony Harrison is Teresa's current amour, and his framed manuscripts now outnumber Mehta's gift icons in her Upper West Side study. Even before she fought off a mugger on a New York street, she was a recluse. "I make my own dresses; I never go to the hairdresser; I never go to parties," she sums up. "With my background I find it very hard to justify the privileged life I have. It takes all my energy to do this very elitist thing. So why don't I channel these energies and be something like Mother Teresa?" she asks rhetorically. Versatile as Stratas is, that would seem an impossible role. But Stratas can't drop the thought. "Mother Teresa's really doing something that matters with her life," she says. "I'm just trying to justify mine."
Quiz!
Where is Teresa Stratas currently?
Rumours say that you can find her during summer at her father's village, on some mountain of Crete, where (according always to the legend) there's no electricity.
Any better ideas?
"Most opera singers are fat because they have to put a lot into their mouths to make up for all that comes out of them—they are very oral," theorizes Teresa. "But I'm not—I'm very sexual."
Yet one wonders when the petite Greek-Canadian would have time for lust in her life. At 40, Stratas has emerged as one of the most versatile and sought-after sopranos in the business. Even with tickets scaled up to $55, there are rarely empty seats at the Met these nights—but when Teresa sings there are none.
Her roles of late included both Marenka, the virginal catch in Smetana's The Bartered Bride, and Jenny, the hard-hearted harlot in the Brecht/Weill opera Mahagonny. On TV, Stratas keeps turning up as the court temptress in Strauss' Salomé and as the pious mother in Amahl and the Night Visitors. In last year's Paris premiere of Alban Berg's horror opera Lulu, she appeared in the title role of the rich, sadistic mistress who winds up a low slut, stabbed to death by Jack the Ripper. On that occasion, a flu-ridden Stratas sang full of antibiotics and anxieties.
"The director insisted that I be Lulu, and not act her," she recalls. "He knew there is a lot of her life in mine. That filled the performance with borderline schizophrenia."
She was born Anastasia Strataki on a dining room table in a Toronto tenement. "My mother tried to get rid of me," she has said, referring to the family's poverty. Teresa did the first singing she can remember at 5 for an audience of three sewer rats in the basement of the diner run by her immigrant parents. Pistol Packin' Mama was her aria until her mother broke up the show and whipped her. As a teenage torch singer in Toronto clubs, Teresa learned to hold the center of attention in rooms filled with drunks, a skill which still works for her, she notes, in opera houses. At 20, after studying three years at the Toronto Conservatory, Stratas sang Smoke Gets in Your Eyes on Arthur Godfrey's talent show, and a listener phoned to tell her she should try the Met. She did later that year.
At her audition Met manager Rudolf Bing asked her to do some Mozart, and she told him she didn't know any. That seemed odd, and Bing asked if she could sing Isolde. Nope. "Ask her to sing Tristan. She won't know the difference," she heard one of Bing's aides suggest. "At the time, of course, I didn't," she laughs. But she was an unusually fast study. The Met rushed her onstage one night to replace an ailing soprano as Liù in Turandot with Birgit Nilsson and Franco Corelli. "I was too dumb to be terrified," she said. The reviews were too good to believe.
Teresa Stratas during her first audition at the MetIn the mid-'60s she teamed up with conductor Zubin Mehta, after he left his first wife. The affair was stormy, and in time Stratas said he asked her to give up singing. "I just couldn't see myself going through life as Mrs. Conductor," she says. They split around 1967 and a couple of years later he married TV actress Nancy Kovack.
British poet Tony Harrison is Teresa's current amour, and his framed manuscripts now outnumber Mehta's gift icons in her Upper West Side study. Even before she fought off a mugger on a New York street, she was a recluse. "I make my own dresses; I never go to the hairdresser; I never go to parties," she sums up. "With my background I find it very hard to justify the privileged life I have. It takes all my energy to do this very elitist thing. So why don't I channel these energies and be something like Mother Teresa?" she asks rhetorically. Versatile as Stratas is, that would seem an impossible role. But Stratas can't drop the thought. "Mother Teresa's really doing something that matters with her life," she says. "I'm just trying to justify mine."
Quiz!
Where is Teresa Stratas currently?
Rumours say that you can find her during summer at her father's village, on some mountain of Crete, where (according always to the legend) there's no electricity.
Any better ideas?
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2 comments:
As you know I saw one of her first professional performances right out of the Royal Conservatory - Mimi in Boheme, even then she was a remarkable talent.
She did a "guest appearance" at a Met Opera Guild luncheon honouring her carrer a few months ago - apparently looking good and being very warm and forecoming. It was mentioned in a few of the comment over at Parterre.
And as your tag put is: I miss Teresa Stratas!
it was many many years after i'd -unwittingly, as an awestruck child- seen her as susanna in covent garden [late 1970's] that i realised that i had seen this tremendous singer that i had in the meantime re-discovered through her two weill records - and tony harrison's -one of my favourite living british poets- dedication in his 1987 selected poems: "for Teresa / '...son io il poeta, / essa la poesia.'"
i subsequently missed her a couple of times during their joint visits to delphi - for the internation greek tragedy conference and festival
may she be well wherever she is right now
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