She took her time.
Has always followed the rule of only following her voice, which “chooses the way”.
At the end of her career, Julia Varady could claim to be "the most versatile, artistically committed lyrical-dramatic soprano of the last quarter of the 20th century" (The Grammophone).
In the almost 35 years of her career, she has sung a repertoire that transcends all subject boundaries with lyrical, dramatic and ornate parts, and like very few other sopranos she is called "assoluta".
The daughter of a Hungarian doctor and a German mother first received violin and piano lessons as a child and, at an early age, initially assessed as an alto, she took singing lessons. During a test of her vocal range, her teacher discovered that she could climb from the mezzo to the three-dashed D. She began her stage career in 1962/63 at the theater of Cluj (Klausenburg). The singer-scout Peter Mario Katona, today the casting director of the Covent Garden Opera, recommended her to the Frankfurt Opera, directed by Christoph von Dohnányi, who immediately engaged her: for roles such as Elvira ("Don Giovanni"), Elisabetta ("Don Carlo") ), Marguerite (“Faust”), Antonia (“Les Contes d'Hoffmann”), the young girl (“Moses and Aron”) and Saffi (“The Gypsy Baron”) for their first season (1970/71).In the same year she was engaged by Wolfgang Sawallisch as Vitellia for a new production of Mozart's “La Clemenza di Tito” (director: Jean-Pierre Ponnelle) at the Munich Opera Festival. After the brilliant success in this role, which has been characterized as "Lady Macbeth" of the 18th century, she came to the Bavarian State Opera as a guest for five years before joining the ensemble in 1976. The focus of her repertoire was initially on the central roles of Mozart - Cecilio in “Lucio Silla”, Elettra in “Idomeneo”, Countess (“Le Nozze di Figaro”), Donna Anna (“Don Giovanni”) are documented by complete recordings - next to Verdi's Violetta, the two Leonors, Elisabetta and Desdemona. There were also Wagner's Sieglinde, Strauss' Arabella, Puccini's Butterfly and Giorgetta in "Il Tabarro" with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau,who became her life partner in 1977. In 1978 she was Cordelia in the world premiere of Aribert Reimann's "Lear".
Since that year the Deutsche Oper in Berlin has become its second parent company. Unlike many of her colleagues, Julia Varady has refused to pursue an extensive career. At the New York Met she only sang six performances as Elvira in “Don Giovanni”, twenty in Vienna and only a few in London or Paris. “You can't be at home in every house in the world. There is not enough time for that. If you want to work on something seriously, you need calm and the familiarity of a team. If the musicians in an orchestra don't know me yet, if, conversely, I haven't heard how an instrumentalist sounds, breathes and phrases, I don't enjoy it. "
There is time that she was unfortunately not given: the hours in the studio to record some of her central roles. Certainly, their discography is rich, in it you can find works by Cimarosa and Mozart, Spontini and Halévy, Mascagni and Richard Strauss, not least a number of performance recordings.
But that she didn't record roles like Senta, Elisabeth and Sieglinde and especially Amelia (“Un Ballo in Maschera”), Leonora (“Il Trovatore” and “La Forza del Destino”), Aida and Desemona (Otello) or even Butterfly is a testament to the blatant failure of the industry. But forgiving that she was able to record two anthologies with arias by Verdi and others with arias and scenes from works by Peter Tchaikovsky, Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss for the Munich label Orfeo - all the more gratifying than the sound of her voice The colors of autumn could not yet be recognized, but still the feeling for the colors of emotions and the glow of dramatic expression. A song of praise is to be heard today for the eightieth birthday.