Friday, March 22, 2013
HERO-INE
Risé Stevens has died at 99.
Rise Stevens Opera Singer Dies at 99
You can't be expected to know who this is.
When I was a kid, she was all over radio, films. Then television.
She was a Bronx girl and her last name was Steenberg. Improbably her birth first name was Rise, Norwegian. A perfect name for an opera singer.
Stevens was notoriously not temperamental. Anything but a diva.
When it was time to retire, she did so with dispatch and became the president of a music school.
Her story is a lot like Beverly Sills.
She is a hero because she got to be 99 but also because she was one of those people who made a bridge for kids like me from pop music to "serious" stuff. There was no distinction for her. And she didn't hype the pop up like a lot of the sopranos. She just piped down and did it straight.
She was famous for doing Carmen and she owned the role for decades. It had to be a pain in the ass to sing all those arias all those years. The same ones over and over but she was a generous performer and also knew where the bread was buttered.
Over time, Ms. Stevens forsook the traditional interpretation of Carmen as a saucy temptress, playing her instead as “hard, calculating, tough and one step away from a prostitute,” as The International Dictionary of Opera said in 1993.I have to admit that I had no idea she was still alive. I am glad she was/is. All those years, a gift. For us and for her.
One more time, honey. The card scene.
In the still of the night (1946)
