Regine Crespin; diva noted for magnetism
LOS ANGELES -- French soprano Regine Crespin, who forged an international reputation largely in German operas, died yesterday at a Paris hospital, according to her longtime record label, EMI. She was 80.
She had liver cancer, said her manager, Mireille Gaucher.
The possessor of a dark-toned, opulent voice that she used tastefully and intelligently, Ms. Crespin initially learned all her roles in French. But once it became clear that she had the vocal resources for international stages, she relearned them as appropriate in German or Italian and went on to sing in Vienna, in the theater built for Wagner's operas in Bayreuth, Germany, and at La Scala opera house in Milan, Italy.
Then, after a series of medical and personal problems came close to ending her career in the early 1970s, she rebuilt her voice, learning new repertory as a mezzo-soprano.
In her candid autobiography, "On Stage, Off Stage: A Memoir," Ms. Crespin related how she had had a difficult childhood with an alcoholic mother and a perfectionist father. She said her maternal grandmother, to whom she dedicated the book, was her greatest influence.
She married writer Lou Bruder in 1962 and revealed in the book that she had terminated a pregnancy because of the demands of her career. She also underwent two long struggles with cancer.
Ms. Crespin was born Feb. 23, 1927, in Marseille and grew up in Nimes. She planned to become a pharmacist but won a vocal contest in her mid-teens and then studied at the Paris Conservatory.
She made her professional debut in 1948 as Charlotte in Jules Massenet's "Werther" in Reims, France. She sang Elsa in Wagner's "Lohengrin" in 1950 in the Alsatian city of Mulhouse and Kundry in Wagner's "Parsifal" from 1958 to 1960 in Bayreuth.
In 1962, she made her Metropolitan Opera debut as the Marschallin in Richard Strauss's "Der Rosenkavalier" and remained with the company until 1987.
She appeared several times with the Met when touring in Boston and with the Opera Company of Boston, including her final appearance as Carmen in Bizet's opera in 1983.
"She has always been the most human and vulnerable of the great-voiced singers; it is why she excelled in the most womanly roles of the dramatic soprano repertory -- Sieglinde, the Marschallin, Dido in Berlioz's "Les Troyens," wrote Boston Globe critic Richard Dyer in 1983. "She says that during her international career she preferred to sing only parts that spoke to her; through them, she also expressed herself."
After retiring from singing in 1989, she remained active as a teacher at the Paris Conservatory and giving master classes in the United States.
"I thought my voice was not so flexible, that it was the beginning of going down, and I didn't want to do that," she told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1997. "So I stopped. Once the decision was made, it was easy. Now I am free to do whatever I want; I can have a cigarette, I can have a drink. There's no voice in the back saying, 'Be careful, you have to sing next week.' "
In her autobiography, originally published in French in 1982 as "La Vie et L'amour d'une Femme" (The Life and Love of a Woman) and later expanded and revised for an English version published in 1997, Ms. Crespin wrote: "It was a big fight between Regine and Crespin, the diva.
"Regine was always under the table, saying, 'Hey, I would like to live, too.' But Ms. Crespin would say, 'Shut up, you have to appear here and there.' In the end, they both won. We reached a gentleman's agreement.
"People think we are prima donnas," she added, "that we are taken out of a box to go on stage, that it's all limousines and flowers and champagne. I wanted to say we are like other human beings -- we suffer, we love, we are angry, we have cancer, we lose a friend, a child."
