Sempre libera

Eleanor Steber (July 17, 1914 – October 3, 1990) was an American operatic soprano. Steber is noted as one of the first major opera stars to have achieved the highest success with training and a career based in the United States. Eleanor Steber was born in Wheeling, West Virginia on July 17, 1914. She was the daughter of William Charles Steber, Sr. (1888–1966) and Ida Amelia (née Nolte) Steber (1885–1985). She had two younger siblings – William Charles Steber, Jr. (1917–2002) and Lucile Steber Leslie (1918–1999). She made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1940 and was one of its leading artists through 1961. She was known for her large, flexible silvery voice, particularly in the high-lying soprano roles of Richard Strauss. She was equally well known for her lyrical portrayals of Mozart's heroines, many in collaboration with conductor Bruno Walter. Beyond Mozart and Strauss her repertoire was quite varied. She was noted for success in the music of Wagner, Alban Berg, Giacomo Puccini and also in French opera. Steber sang the lead in the world premiere of the American opera Vanessa by Samuel Barber. She was also featured in a number of Metropolitan Opera premieres, including Strauss's Arabella, Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail, and Berg's Wozzeck. . Outside the Metropolitan her career included a 1953 engagement at the Bayreuth Wagner Festival, where her performance as Elsa in Lohengrin was highly acclaimed and recorded by Decca Records. She sang with Arturo Toscanini in his 1944 NBC Symphony broadcast of Beethoven's Fidelio. In 1954 at the Florence May Festival she sang a celebrated performance of Minnie in Puccini's La fanciulla del West with conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos. With Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra she sang the world premiere in 1948 of Samuel Barber's Knoxville, Summer of 1915, a work which she commissioned...

Lyrics & English Translation

VIOLETTA
How strange it is ... how strange!
Those words are carved upon my heart!
Would a true love bring me misfortune?
What do you think, o my troubled spirit?
No man before kindled a flame like this.
Oh, joy ...
I never knew ...
To love and to be loved!
Can I disdain this
For a life of sterile pleasure?

Was this the man my heart,
Alone in the crowd,
Delighted many times to paint
In vague, mysterious colours?
This man, so watchful yet retiring,
Who haunted my sickbed
And turned my fever
Into the burning flame of love!
That love,
The pulse of the whole world,
Mysterious, unattainable,
The torment and delight of my heart.

It's madness! It's empty delirium!
A poor, lonely woman
Abandoned in this teeming desert
They call Paris!
What can I hope? What should I do?
Enjoy myself! Plunge into the vortex
Of pleasure and drown there!
Enjoy myself!

Free and aimless I must flutter
From pleasure to pleasure,
Skimming the surface
Of life's primrose path.
As each day dawns,
As each day dies,
Gaily I turn to the new delights
That make my spirit soar.

ALFREDO
(outside the window)
Love is the pulse

VIOLETTA
Oh!

ALFREDO
... of the whole world ...

VIOLETTA
Yes! Love!

ALFREDO
Mysterious, unattainable,
The torment and delight of my heart.

VIOLETTA
It's madness!
Pleasure!
Free and aimless, I must flutter ... etc.


A link to this wonderful artist's personal website:

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I send my kind and warm regards,