Singers: Irene Dalis

Irene Dalis was one of those opera singers who could drive audiences crazy with her intense vocal and dramatic portrayals. During the late 1960s and early 1970s I was a huge fan of hers and saw her in many roles. Her voice was certainly not conventionally beautiful; if you wanted sumptuous Italianate sound you went for Simionato and later for Cossotto. Christa Ludwig, Shirley Verrett and Grace Bumbry had more attractive voices and easier tops than Dalis. But there was something so passionate and incisive about the way Irene Dalis sang everything from Lady Macbeth to Fricka, from Santuzza to Herodias in SALOME, that caused me to plan trips from Syracuse specifically to see her onstage at the Met.

I heard her on many broadcasts before I actually encountered her in the theatre. In AIDA, MACBETH, the RING Cycle, DON CARLO, SAMSON ET DALILA and TRISTAN UND ISOLDE she kept up an unsettling assault on the emotions of a young opera fan with her powerful vocal portrayals; I didn't need to see her to imagine her stalking about the stage as the relentlessly needling Fricka or turning her scathing disdain on Samson in a fury at the end of Act II when her seductive endeavors have failed.  She did not have a long, seamless vocal line nor was her top totally secure, but she had this way of delving into the colours of her instrument and of putting just the right stress on a word that would make an unforgettable impression.

I first saw Irene Dalis perform at the Cincinnati Zoo Opera as Azucena in TROVATORE. Her singing was  powerful and her acting so passionate; my parents, who really knew nothing about opera, were excited by her performance. Backstage I timidly asked for her autograph and she was very kind as I recall, remarking that it was nice to see young people at the opera. I was 13. Her Leonora was the fledgling spinto Martina Arroyo; my father managed a conversation with the conductor Ottavio Ziino despite the latter's total incomprehension of English.

1966 marked my graduation from high school and my first trips to NYC on my own. Living six hours away meant that things had to be planned well in advance; also in those first seasons at the new Met tickets were pretty difficult to obtain. Orchestra seats cost $17 and I often indulged. Irene Dalis quickly became one of the singers around whose performances a visit to NYC would be planned.

My first experience of seeing Irene Dalis on the Met stage was during the 1967 June Festival in a performance of the Wieland Wagner production of LOHENGRIN. When the new house opened, the demand for tickets was so high that the Met extended its season into June with added performances and some of its biggest stars. Irene's cold-blooded and subtly inflected interpretation of one of opera's great bad ladies held its own onstage with Sandor Konya, the top interpreter of Lohengrin of the day, and  the legendary Elisabeth Grummer making a wildly successful and greatly belated Met debut at the age of 57. Irene wore a deep green gown, if memory serves, and seemed like some insidious reptile as she cravenly ingratiated herself to the hapless Elsa and then heartlessly turned against the naive maiden. The ovations that night were huge though nothing out of the ordinary during that golden era.

During the next few seasons Irene Dalis was a major reason for me to take the long train trip to Manhattan. I sent her fan letters to which she graciously replied. I saw her in unforgettable performances of AIDA, FRAU OHNE SCHATTEN, DON CARLO, CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA, TROVATORE, BALLO IN MASCHERA, SALOME and a particularly memorable ADRIANA LECOUVREUR at which the young rising-star tenor from NYC Opera, Placido Domingo, substituted for Franco Corelli at the last minute in an exciting Met debut opposite the beloved Renata Tebaldi in her favorite role. Irene's venom-voiced Princesse and Anselmo Colzani's poignantly human Michonnet turned the evening into a true classic. I can vividly recall both Tebaldi & Dalis graciously encouraging their young tenor colleague and turning their backs on the audience during duets with him so he could send his tones into the big hall and watch Maestro Cleva. Such generosity.

Irene's first UIrica in BALLO at the Met was a five star affair.  Her colleagues were Montserrat Caballe, Reri Grist, Placido Domingo and Robert Merrill. These singers gave us a rich evening of vocalism and Irene's gripping delivery of the fortune-teller's prophecies was enhanced by eerie contact lenses which gave the illusion of empty sockets. From the depths of her "Silenzio!" to the sailing harmonies in the trio with Caballe & Domingo, Dalis was on fascinating form.

At the June Festival in 1971, Irene had one of her great personal triumphs at the Met with a grand-scaled portrayal of Azucena in TROVATORE which evoked frantic ovations. The Dalis voice was totally 'on' throughout the range while she portrayed the demented gypsy with her accustomed fervor. Backstage afterwards, she was mobbed and they opened the greenroom to accommodate all the fans who wanted to meet her.

There were two roles in which Irene Dalis left particularly powerful memories. The first was Amneris in AIDA. In the photo left she is lording it over Leontyne Price in their Act II confrontation. The Dalis voice, with its potent chest register, left such an indelible impression on so many phrases of this opera that to this day when I think about the music of Amneris, it is her voice I hear.

The Judgment Scene of Act IV of the Verdi opera, in which Amneris seeks to save her beloved Radames from a sentence of death for treason, was the high point of Irene's interpretation. Here the character of Amneris who has been so proud and manipulative in the earlier acts is brought into acute human focus when her power as Princess of Egypt carries no weight with the condemning priests; she is reduced to begging only to have the implacable judges walk off chanting "Traditor!" In the final moments, Amneris turns on the priests and delivers a fiery curse on them before collapsing in despair.

On June 28, 1969 Irene Dalis sang Amneris with the Met in a concert performance in Central Park. She was in extraordinary voice and had the audience in the palm of her hand from her opening phrase. The massive crowd was so keyed-up by the time Irene came to the Judgment Scene that the excitement was palpable. I don't think she ever topped this performance and aside from all her incisive dramatic phrases and startlingly vivid declamation of the words, she found the most shattering colours of remorse midway thru the scene when Radames has rejected her help. After the trial, in which Radames utters no word of self-defense, Amneris attempts to bargain with the priests but they will have none of it.  Flinging out her scalding "Anatema su voi!" Irene brought the scene to a heart-pounding climax. The very instant she let go of her final top note the audience at Sheep Meadow erupted in a delirious ovation which went on for several minutes. Irene has to bow again and again.

Having lost everything, the once-proud Amneris appears at the very end of the opera to pray over the tomb where Radames has been buried alive. She does not know that her rival Aida has secretly entered the tomb and is dying in Radames' arms. The quiet  ending of the opera with Amneris intoning "Pace...pace" is captured in this dramatic photo of Irene Dalis from the Met stage.

You wouldn't think there could be anything to top her Amneris, but in 1966 at the Met premiere of DIE FRAU OHNE SCHATTEN Irene Dalis found the role of a lifetime. In one of the richest casts ever assembled - Leonie Rysanek, Christa Ludwig, James King and Walter Berry, conducted by the immortal Karl Bohm - Irene came close to stealing the show. As the Nurse, in whose care the Empress has been placed by her father {the enigmatic Keikobad}, Irene's singing caught the myriad complexities of her character: maternal, scheming, ironic, tender and brutal by turns. The vocal writing races up and down thru the registers, cascading through demanding turns of phrase into the deepest chest tones and ending the second act on a searing top B. Irene took it all in stride, her acting as  colorful as her singing and burning the words into the listener's memory where I can still hear them today as if she were singing them directly to me. Leonie Rysanek was THE Empress of her time - of all time, I suggest - and she sang it here and in Europe with every interpreter of the Nurse who was willing to attempt the impossible role. She once said she rated the Irene Dalis interpretation as ideal.

Immortal moment: anyone who ever saw the Met's FRAU with Rysanek and Dalis as Empress and Nurse will never forget this scene in the third act where the Empress rejects the Nurse and goes to her trial in Keikobad's temple. The scene, starting with their arrival by boat at the tower gates, contains some of the most brilliant and taxing vocal writing Strauss ever conceived. The Rysanek Kaiserin was stupefying in its vocal  power and intensity and Irene Dalis kept pace with her every step of the way. I once experienced FRAU from the front row of the orchestra, right behind Maestro Bohm's left shoulder. An unforgettable evening.

Here's Irene in her dressing room after a performance of FRAU, still wearing her stage make-up. You wouldn't think to look at her that she'd just sung one of the most demanding opera roles ever created. It was always a great experience to visit her backstage; she was so kind and she always remembered me. It was an unfortunate happenstance when she was scheduled to sing Klytamnestra in ELEKTRA at the Met - surely a perfect role for her - and on the day the scheduled Elektra took ill and they were unable to find a replacement. They were forced to change the opera to FIDELIO  and New York never got to experience Irene's interpretation of opera's most maniaical mother.

There is only one commercial recording of Dalis to my knowledge: a 1962 PARSIFAL from Bayreuth conducted by Hans Knappertsbusch. It has gotten generally very positive reviews and when I asked my friend Dmitry his impressions of the Dalis Kundry he said he liked it just fine. To me it is not representative of her best - despite many exciting passages - and I do believe that she had been ill that summer and in fact I think she canceled at least one of the performances. There are pirates of her many Met broadcasts; her 1961 RING roles (Fricka and Waltraute), the 1970 AIDA and both her FRAUs from the airwaves are among my favorites.      

After retiring from the operatic stage, Irene Dalis returned to San Jose to teach and eventually founded Opera San Jose where she continues to serve as General Director. We simply have so few of these larger-than-life operatic performers today and I am thankful to have experienced so many of her performances and to have known her. 

Comments

[Nicole]

Philip, thanks again for another insightful post. I've never heard of Irene Dalis & it's a shame that she has only one recording.

[Philip]

Yes, she had such a big Met career that it is surprising that only one role was recorded commercially.

[Dmitry]

Oh, Irene Dalis! I must say that first, I don't quite understand people who say the think her voice was unattractive. I really hear nothing ugly in the sound. I only think Dalis' Italian diction was weird, but what she does with the text and the music! This woman was out of control. As a rule there aren't many singers I actually regret not seeing live (what's the point of regretting being born when I was?) But Dalis is a singer I really do wish I got to see and hear live. As it is, her recordings will have to make do. Her Die Amme is astonishing - too bad they cut so much of her music in those days. I've seen 3 Amme's live: Reinhild Runkel, Julia Juon, and Jane Henschel. Julia Juon especially made a great impression on me, but I think today Dalis' interpretation could only be equaled by Dolora Zajick (if she ever got off her backside and did something adventurous.) Her Eboli and Azucena (she was Azucena at Price and Corelli's Met debuts) were also stunning. It's hard to imagine she even gave Isolde a go! I think she later admitted it was a mistake, but she wanted to see if she could do it. And why not!

I know some years ago a fire destroyed her entire personal collection of her own recordings and a friend was putting out feelers on the web from other collectors to replace it. I hope he succeeded!

[Philip]

Dalis sang her first Isolde in San Francisco on the night after her father died. It was one of those fateful timings that can throw the best-laid plans awry. Dalis agreed to sing as the whole thing was built around her, though she was obviously under deep emotional strain. There are recordings of it; I used to have it on reel-to-reel.

Irene Dalis had two other bits of bad luck in her career, the first being the canceled ELEKTRA in what would have been her only Met Klytamnestra; due to there being no viable substitute for the title role to be found that night, FIDELIO was substituted with Christa Ludwig in her only Met Leonore.

In 1972, San Diego Opera mounted the world premiere production of Alva Henderson's MEDEA for Dalis {the opera written expressly for her} but she was ill and after one or two performances surrendered the role to Marvalee Cariaga.

(As I recall, a similar incident took place in Sutherland's career when news of her mother's death reached her on the day of her NY debut with the American Opera Society in Bellini's BEATRICE DI TENDA.)

[Robert Schlesinger]

There is at least one more commercial recording by Irene Dalis, I have it here next to my keyboard: a 10 inch Telefunken TW 30168 with Carmen excerpts, sung in German, with Heinz Hoppe and Karl Schmitt-Walter.

[Philip]

Thanks for the note, Robert. I had no idea Irene Dalis had ever sung Carmen in any way, shape or form...that is exciting! Do you know what year the recording dates from?

[Robert Schlesinger]

According to http://www.operadis-opera-discography.org.uk/ (a very reliable source), it's from 1961.

[Margot]

Thanks for this lovely post about Ms. D's performance history. I've posted a link at Opera San Jose's page at Facebook (http://tinyurl.com/cxzhh2), so that other fans can enjoy reading more about her.

[steve]

Irene Dalis was a supremely great singer and a wonderful human being. I take issue with fact that her top was not easy. it was and for that reason Lady Macbeth held no terrors for her. The intensity of her performances were matched only by the likes of martha Modl with whom she shared so much in common. Her Ortrud was second to none as were her Amme, her Fricka, her Eboli, and her Azucena. That she became a great teacher was no surprise to me. It simply affirmed in a very public way the generous spirit that I knew was there since I was very young

[Philip]

I heard a lot of tension in her upper range at times. She was usually able to hit the notes but not always with the comfort of someone who is truly at home in the higher range.

Overall, I believe her passion and dramatic vibrancy more than compensated for any vocal quirks that set in from time to time.

[Steve Kerr]

To the person from Syracuse (I attended S.U. and am originally from Binghamton)...I took the bus from Binghamton back in 1966 by myself and came back the same night. My mother wanted to have me committed, but I reminded her that I had written a paper on "Die Frau Ohne Schatten" at college and just had to see it at the Met, and I'm glad I did! I hate the new Met production, especially where NOTHING happens at the end of Act II. I own the only two DVDs of "Frau," and I prefer the Solti for conducting and no cuts, and the Swallisch for the very interesting staging, especially the exciting end of Act II, done entirely with flowing, undulating drapery. Yes, I thought Dalis was a GREAT Amme, but I also think that Dunn back then and Lipovsek now are also wonderful nurses. I'm very sorry that the Met chose to retire the 1966 "FRAU" because what they replaced it with is pretty ridiculous, and I only deigned to see it because of the score and Deborah Voigt. On the other hand, the Met's new "Helen" was quite incredible, especially the instant final transformation of the palace to an ocean liner at the end. On the other hand, when I saw the first even "Daphne" in New York at the City Opera, their ludicrous production almost made me puke! I actually wrote Paul Kellogg and told him that you shouldn't reinvent an opera that has NEVER been as far as I know in the USA except at the Santa Fe Opera, which now, under Crosby's successor, has apparently abandoned his practice of doing a Strauss opera every season. Also, the "Danae" a few years ago in concert with Botstein and Flannigan was pretty damned exciting; I'd love to see it staged, properly, that is...long live Richard Strauss and his incredible orchestrations!!!!!!