An Achingly Beautiful Voice

All it took was one phrase, one utterly beautiful and musically criminal phrase that absolutely took my breath away. In that one moment, there was no other singer possible than Arleen Auger; there was no other music than that suspect but achingly beautiful Bach.

And I was hooked, as I have been ever since. Her voice is perhaps the cleanest I’ve ever heard, her intonation was impeccable, and her control was spectacular. And on stage, she projected a regal simplicity: she had started out as an elementary teacher, drifted in singing, and started her career subbing for Lucia Popp. Here’s The New York Times on the subject:

As it turned out, the soprano Lucia Popp had just withdrawn from a production of "Zauberflote" at the Vienna State Opera. That company's director, Josef Krips, heard Miss Auger's audition at the smaller Volksoper, and offered her a contract. When she joined the company, she later said, she knew only the one role, had no stage experience and did not speak German. She made her debut without a rehearsal, and had to ask other singers where to go as she was pushed out on stage.

Right—you’d remember that night!

And so, like so many other young American singers, Auger formed her career in  Europe, and though she later became known in the States, it was her nearly 200 recordings that were her introduction.

Obviously, those 200 recordings included a lot of music, and Auger’s repertoire went from Monteverdi to two song cycles by women composers that Auger had commissioned. And the only time I saw Auger in concert, she had made the slightly unusual choice of championing Ned Rorem in her recital. 

She was singing on the cusp, and what a glorious cusp it was. We now have amazing musicians singing impeccably in what is  called “historically informed perfortmance practice,” which means, if a whole group of musicologists are to believed, that the sounds that come out of Philippe Jaroussky’s voice today are utterly the same that Monteverdi—four hundred years ago—would have heard.

There are days I feel that—and I know this is heresy—arguing with the early-music guys is like arguing with a cat, and guess who always wins? But Auger in her peak was before the peak of historically informed blah-blah-blah. So what did that mean? Well, there was a harpsichord yes—we were that far along—but the cellist playing the continuo? As you can hear below, he’s (I’m presuming “he”) using the most gorgeous vibrato, which h creates a golden tone that is ravishing, ravishing…but in Bach? In Handel?

And what about those tempi? Modern singers have their foot quite firmly on the gas, and there are times you feel you’re on a sort of musical autobahn, but Auger? She’s out there floating across azure skies and above golden fields in some lovely balloon, being held aloft by her own gorgeous voice. Is it correct, that lovely voice? Probably not. But it’s achingly beautiful.

“Achingly,” by the way, being the adjective of choice for Auger—check out the comments by all the YouTube commentators, and you’ll see that it’s the frontrunner.

It’s the voice, yes, but also what we know: this luminous, luscious artist contracted brain cancer in her early fifties, and died cruelly young at age 53. Today, she would be 75—no longer singing, but very probably teaching, and very likely contributing a lot to younger singers.

A friend, a fine male alto who, yes, toed the musical line of our times once confessed: however difficult vibrato is for a string player, it’s utterly natural for the human voice. So yes, he used vibrato sparingly in baroque music, but he was never altogether convinced.   

And for Auger? However wrong she is, she’s absolutely right!