Another sadness – Sena Jurinac has died
mainCroatian by birth, and one of the golden post-War voices at the Vienna Opera, she passed away at 90.
A classic interpreter of Mozart and Strauss, she made the premiere recording of the Four Last Songs (for EMI, in Stockholm, Fritz Busch conducting) after Kirsten Flagstad sang the first performance at the Royal Albert Hall. Here’s her version of Im Abendrot.
RIP.
The youthful Sena Jurinac studied under Gustav Mahler’s old Hamburg ‘flame’ and operatic protegé Anna von Mildenburg at the Mozarteum in Salzburg in summer 1943 (and 1944?).
I never knew that, Michael. Though Anna was, by then, pretty decrepit and decked in Nazi awards.
A photograph of Jurinac and Mildenburg taken in 1943 is included in the volume of Mahler-Mildenburg letters edited by Franz Willnauer.
thanks…. will dig it out.
Although I met this lovely, warm-hearted lady in the late 1970s, I only ever “heard” her singing live once- somewhat muffled by my mother’s costume and womb! (Her memory- not mine.) So sad not to have known her better.