Golden Age Singer of the Week--Teresa Stich-Randall

Uncredited artwork, courtesy of bach-cantatas.com,
possibly for an album cover.

Here is a performer whose name I've long known, but whose performances I have never really studied. She was a treasure! Her Wikipedia bio-blurb is brief enough to quote an abridged version here rather than a link.

Teresa Stich-Randall was born in Connecticut in 1927. Her operatic debut was in the role of Henrietta M. in Virgil Thomson's The Mother of Us All in 1947. She was discovered in the late 1940s by Arturo Toscanini, who engaged her for a series of performances with his NBC Symphony Orchestra in New York. Toscanini described her at the time as "the find of the century".

She made her European debut in Florence and won a competition in Lausanne the following year. Stich-Randall was a regular performer with the Basel Opera, the Vienna State Opera and at the Salzburg Festival. From 1955, she was a regular at summer events at Aix-en-Provence in France, where her portrayal of Donna Anna in Don Giovanni was highly esteemed. She first sang at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City in Così fan tutte in 1961 and remained on their roster of singers until 1966.

Stich-Randall appeared on a number of notable recordings including Falstaff, Der Rosenkavalier and L'Orfeo. Her career had largely ended by 1980 and she died in Vienna, aged 79, in 2007, of natural causes.


Here is a video I found when searching various Schubert songs. She sings Seligkeit in a 1960 TV performance:

Here she sings Ihr habt nun traurigkeit from the German Requiem of Mr. Brahms, in a 1958 performance with the Norddeutshes Symphonie-Orchester (Hamburg) under Carl Bamberger:

Non mi dir, 1960, theater and conductor uncredited:

Because I can't resist, here is the mask scene, also from a 1960 Don Giovanni, this one credited as an RAI TV production.  With her are Luigi Alva and Leyla Gencer, about both of whom I've written before.