Karajan artists: Helen Donath – a youthful voice

When he cast singers for young characters like Eva in “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” and Marzelline in “Fidelio” Karajan was always keen on voices that sounded really young.

Helen Donath had such a voice and worked with him on both parts. Born in 1940 in Texas as Helen Erwin she started her career in the early 1960s in Germany. After her marriage to the conductor and pianist Klaus Donath in 1965, she took her husband’s name and had increasing success as “Helen Donath” working in Munich, Salzburg and Vienna. Her first collaboration with Karajan was a spectacular one – Mozart’s “Coronation Mass” in the Vatican for Pope Paul VI. In the same year, they performed sacred “Karajan classics” like Bruckner’s Te Deum in Salzburg and Bach’s Magnificat in Edinburgh and they met up for Karajan’s second “Ring” recording with Donath as Rhinemaiden Woglinde in “Rheingold”. In fact, Donath’s “Weia! Waga! Woge, du Welle!” is the first voice to be heard in the complete Karajan “Ring”. In 1970, they performed Beethoven’s Ninth several times (it was the Beethoven bicentenary) and recorded two major opera recordings within six weeks – “Fidelio” and “Die Meistersinger” in Dresden. “Die Meistersinger” is praised as one of the best studio recordings of the opera and also as one of Karajan’s finest ever. Donath had done her studies precisely:

“I am very lucky to be married to a conductor. […] Klaus knew that Karajan preferred the long phrases. […] We prepared my parts in accordance with that preference.”

An interviewer asked her why her Eva was so naïve. She answered: “Herr von Karajan wanted me to do it this way. […] Back then, he recorded the St Matthew Passion and ‘Die Meistersinger’ more or less at the same time. I asked him to engage me for the St Matthew Passion and to take a colleague of mine, who was to my mind the incarnation of Evchen, for ‘Die Meistersinger’. But he said: ‘No, I don’t want a grown-up voice. She has to be Evchen [little Eva].’ He wanted a very young voice. I said to him: ‘But Herr von Karajan, I am not able to perform the part on stage.’ He said: ‘Nonsense, with me you could do it.’ I adored that man and I really had a heartfelt relationship with him. We coped very well. He also liked my husband and my son a lot. He wanted the part to sound naïve, young and fresh and not a mature voice. You see, after all, it took me 16 years to perform the part on stage!” And she took it very seriously: “When I sing Evchen, people say to me: ‘Good heavens, you sing three notes and then you’re in your dressing room for an hour. Isn’t that boring?’ And I say: ‘Not at all! Although I’m sitting in my dressing room, I never leave Nuremberg. Either I have my loudspeakers switched on or I sit on stage in the off. I have to be a part of the whole thing!”

Karajan’s and Donath’s last joint performance was again on the occasion of an anniversary. It was the Te Deum for Bruckner’s 150^th birthday in 1974.

—  P.R. Jenkins