| Biography | Júlia Várady (Hungarian: Várady Júlia, born Júlia Tözsér, September 1, 1941) is a German soprano of Hungarian origin born in Nagyvárad, Hungary (today Oradea, Romania). Starting out as a mezzo-soprano, Várady is being considered as the only true soprano assoluta after Maria Callas.
At the age of six she began violin lessons at the music conservatory in Cluj-Napoca and then, aged fourteen, voice training with Emilia Popp. She later studied voice with Arta Florescu in Bucharest.
She made her debut, as a mezzo-soprano, with the Cluj Opera in 1962, singing in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice and as Fiordiligi in Mozart's Così fan tutte.
In 1970, she joined the Frankfurt-am-Main Opera and thereafter sang mostly in Western Europe. In 1973, she moved from Frankfurt to the Bayerische Staatsoper (the Bavarian State Opera) in Munich and later joined the Deutsche Oper Berlin. She has appeared at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London; at the Vienna State Opera; at the Metropolitan Opera in New York; at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan; at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires; at the Opéra Bastille in Paris and at the Salzburg, Munich and Edinburgh festivals. In 1978, she created the role of Cordelia at the premiere of Aribert Reimann's opera Lear with the Bayerische Staatsoper.
She was married to the German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau from 1977 until his death in 2012. In 1998, she retired from opera. She is currently a guest professor at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin. |