Verdi wrote a lively and highly entertaining mezzo-soprano role into his Rigoletto, the opera we are enjoying today. Maddalena is young, sexy, and attractive enough to turn the head of the Duke of Mantua. Her morals are questionable, but that is not unusual for operatic mezzos when you remember Carmen and Giulietta in Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann. She is also a woman who lives on the edge, and men who are attracted to her do so at their peril. Carmen and Giulietta are both dangerous women, and so is the biblical Dalila. Well, Risë Stevens, whom I am honoring this afternoon, made her fame by creating alluring and dangerous women on stage. For decades, she was the most charismatic Carmen at the Met, and she was also a highly celebrated Dalila and Giulietta. But she never sang Maddalena, except perhaps in her student years at Juilliard.

But after those student years, she went to Europe at the advice of her Juilliard teacher and mentor Anna Schoen-Rene. After more studies in Salzburg, she successfully interpreted a number of leading roles at Prague’s German Theater. World War II brought her back to New York and, with so many European leading artists separated from the Met because of that War, Risë Stevens found a warm welcome during the administration of Edward Johnson. Married to the wise and knowledgeable actor/manager Walter Surovy, the ambitious young diva set her sights on big roles. Maddalena wasn’t one of them, but neither were Wagner’s Fricka and Erda, Edward Johnson’s initial repertoire choices. Being young and glamorous, she accepted Hollywood’s temptation and scored a great success opposite Nelson Eddy in The Chocolate Soldier and in Bing Crosby’s huge hit Going My Way. In the latter she sang the “Habanera” from Carmen, scoring such an impact that Edward Johnson relented and cast her as Carmen in late 1945. Carmen became her signature role; she was to perform it 75 times in the house and 49 more times on tour, a Met record that still stands. With the arrival of the Bing regime in 1950, the stature of Risë Stevens stood firm, and so did her simple resolve: “Nothing but starring roles and, preferably central roles.” I had the pleasure of interviewing Risë Stevens several times on radio, and about 20 years ago, she recalled her two Met General Managers in this manner:

“Bing was a difficult man. I wouldn’t call Johnson, Johnson was not a difficult man. He would, he would be as kind as he could possibly be with people. I wouldn’t have wanted to cross him, but I never saw that part of him. With Rudolf Bing, he was, he was very shrewd, very shrewd, and a good business man and knew what he was doing, the way he wanted his opera house run. And he was a very good general manager, let’s face it. I have many pros and cons about him too, but uh... And we had, there was a long time there where he and I never spoke to one another – three years. But then, everything was hunky-dory again and there we were and we’re good friends today. Time cures things... “

A legendary artist herself, during her 23 consecutive Met seasons, Risë Stevens was surrounded by legends. She sang Octavian to the Marschallin of Lotte Lehmann. Ezio Pinza sang “Non piu andrai” to her Cherubino, and she was the operatic rival to Zinka Milanov’s Gioconda. Sir Thomas Beecham was the conductor when she sang the title role of Mignon, Pierre Monteux led her in her Met revival of Orfeo ed Euridice, and Fritz Reiner presided over her most memorable Carmen in the unforgettable 1952 Tyrone Guthrie production.

Cherubino, Octavian, and Orlovsky, all male roles, but all very different, bring to mind the substantial character changes a very womanly artist like Risë Stevens had to undergo.

There are ample documentaries to substantiate how successfully she impersonated the youthfully amorous Octavian and Cherubino and the sexually ambivalent Orlovsky. When it comes to the seductress Dalila, let her singing voice speak for her.

Music Example – Dalila – “Mon coeur...

This came from the Met broadcast of Saturday, April 12th, 1958, Fausto Cleva conducted. She said farewell to the stage in 1961, and now, more than 40 years later, at age 90, we are saluting Risë Stevens with great respect and ever-enduring affection.

END