The Garcia Lineage: Elisabeth Soderstrom

The picture is grainy, but the high C around the 28th minute?

Bright, full, elegant and effortless.

As a friend—a noted conductor—who sent it to me said: “I’ve never heard singing like this on the stage.”

Such is the voice of Elisabeth Soderström, who is heard singing the role of Giorgetta in Puccini’s Il Tabarro in 1956—in Swedish no less—her technical security astonishing.

Will the rest of this post bemoan the dearth of singers like Soderström? No. There is nothing more boring and depressing than complaining about the present while looking into the past.

What I can tell you is this: Elisabeth Soderström was a student of Adelaide Andrejewa von Skilondz, herself a student of Natalia Alexandrovna Iretskaya, who had studied with none other than Pauline Viardot Garcia and Henriette Nissen-Saloman—a student of Manuel Garcia—Viardot-Garcia’s brother.

A vocal lineage with teeth.

Read more about Soderström in her interview with Bruce Duffie.