Elisabeth Schwarzkopf as the
Marschallin
Awakening to Elisabeth Schwarzkopf's exquisite rendering of Strauss' Four Last Songs was a foundational experience of my teenage years. Besotted by both her voice and Grace Kelly-esque appearance, I would often listen to the record last thing at night, clutching the sleeve like a tragic letter, falling asleep somewhere during the third repetition and awakening around the time Im Abendrot came round for the seventeenth time.
The experience was repeated last Friday morning, in the context of the Today programme's report on the great soprano's death. An excerpt of the last of the Last Songs was duly played, but instead of proceeding with an appropriately nostalgic tone, the Today presenters grilled the Telegraph's opera critic Rupert Christiansen about Schwarzkopf's infamous appearance on Desert Island Discs.
The story was given the same absurd prominence in newspaper reports too. When someone of Schwarzkopf's stature dies, why is their lack of humility on a radio chat show more interesting than their position as one of the greatest singers of the post-war era? When the Queen honoured Schwarzkopf in 1992, was it because someone who needed her own recordings on a desert island would also need a grand title? Or was it for her extraordinary, groundbreaking career?
All artists must be driven by something, and belief in their own greatness is, for obvious reasons, among the most common. If Schwarzkopf's supposed "arrogance" was the extra spark it took to turn her extraordinary talent, intelligence and conscientious labour into true genius, then we should be nothing but grateful for it.
Is it really so outlandish for an artist to rate their achievements highly, regardless of whether their assessment seems correct or not?
