The Incredible Helen

I have been spending a rainy Berkshire afternoon listening to what is possibly the most beautiful voice of the twentieth century, Helen Traubel. My friend Richard Dyer, who loves her singing as much as I do, sent me three CDs of performances by her, gleaned from several sources. Richard, I am ever in your debt.

This is a voice that is seamless from top to bottom. In the low register she sounds like a warm, creamy mezzo-soprano or even a contralto. As the voice moves up in the range, all of that cream is still there but the ease with which she takes her brilliant high notes is heart-stopping. She has endless breath. And she knows how to spin the tone. 'Spinning the tone' is a phrase I heard often in my own early vocal studies. No one seems to remember how to do it any more. It goes beyond the natural vibrato in the voice. Traubel had a very light vibrato, unusual in such a large voice. But the tone always moved. It simply poured effortlessly from that ample body into the world of music. This is what vocal 'spinning' is all about. I try to pass this concept on to my own students.


In listening to her Brahms songs especially, I was near tears hearing the way she caressed every note and every phrase without ever loosing line, legato, or the sense of messa di voce. Her presentation of the emotional text was perfect. She is what I call a 'true' singer. She removes herself from the equation and allows the music and the text to pour out from her in the most compelling manner. 

Olga Averino, one of my mentors, used to say, 'Get out of the way of the music. Don't put yourself in the middle'. She said of one of my students, whose singing she loved, 'Mary becomes the song.'

Traubel always 'became the song!. Her Wagner was always magnificent and it is a shame that the Met didn't allow her to do more of that when she sang there. That is what singing should be about. That is what Traubel always did.

Kirsten Flagstad was THE Wagnerian soprano at the Met at that time and got all the best roles. I also heard and admired Flagstad's singing, (I had standing room for her farewell performance in Fidelio at the old Met in 1950) but her voice had that icy, Nordic quality that, while exciting, did not have the heat and warmth of Traubel's voice.

The quality I hear in the voice of Helen Traubel is something I seldom encounter in today's singers. I admit to prejudice when I say that my dear Lorraine Hunt Lieberson embodied many of the same wonderful qualities that Traubel had. She became the song. She knew how to spin her tone. She was a 'True' singer. I think Richard would agree with me on this statement. I know that he loved Lorraine's singing as much as I did.


Too many of today's sopranos sing for effect. There is very little truth in what they are producing. There is no 'spin' in their voices. This is why so many of them are affected by unpleasant wobbles instead of natural vibratos. There are very few that I want to listen to these days. Maybe I should offer a course in 'tone spinning'. I wonder if anyone would come?

Richard, I thank you profoundly for this wonderful gift of music. It brought back into my life someone who was an early idol in a most poignant way and whose singing I cherish.