France mourns a leading soprano
RIPThe serene classical and baroque soprano Rachel Yakar died yesterday at the age of 87.
Originally from Lyon, she spent 20 years at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf. In summers she adorned Salzburg, Glyndebourne and Edinburgh. She was extensively recorded and commendably private.
The conductor Emmanuelle Haim writes: Chère Rachel, quelle tristesse de te voir partie. J’ai t’ai adorée dans tous tes rôles, écoutés en boucle. Puis quand je t’ai côtoyée d’abord en tant qu’élève puis comme professeur au conservatoire, je me suis enrichie auprès de toi. Tant d’échanges magnifiques, chaleureux et généreux. Je t’espérais immortelle mais ta musique le sera.
Marc Minkowski adds: Thank you for this sublime Poppée with Harnoncourt and Ponnelle, for Illia, for Aricie, for Jenufa, for your perfect style, your exemplary diction, your generous lyricism both angelic and sensual. I grew up with you, and will continue.
What a wonderful voice! She now adorns the night sky.
I was listening to her Glyndebourne Donna Elvira and other clips on youtube just last week. Rachel Yakar was a singer of such tonal beauty and such honesty of approach , absolutely no gimmicks in her style.
She was very much her own singer , discreet , but always fully engaged in her music making. She had taken the very best technical elements from the singing teaching of her tutor Germaine Lubin and used this as a basis to develop her own considerable talent.
How sad to hear of her passing.
Also remarkable for the durability of her voice. Many of her recordings were made when she was in her 50’s.
Her beautiful voice adorns a fantastic but somewhat underrated recording of Pelleas Et Melisande, set down in 1979 and conducted by Armin Jordan – a worthy testament to her magnificent artistry – RIP.
She also worked and recorded with Michel Corboz.
RIP.
The Admeto arias in your remembrance of Rachel Yakar are from one of the first period-band recordings of a complete Handel opera, which Alan Curtis brought into being nearly a decade before the Handel tricentennial explosion of such recordings. Rachel Yakar and Jill Gomez, utterly distinctive voices and musicians, with their countertenor colleagues René Jacobs and James Bowman, led the cast, and the recording remains one of the most searching and moving of Handel recordings. And the ravishing delicacy of Yakar’s tracery in the great arias of Alceste still takes my breath away. As does her passing.