Romantic Duets – Julia Varady & Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

Opera Now (May, 2018)
This recital recorded at the Düsseldorf Opera in November 1989 reveals the professionality of the baritone and omnicantor Dietrich Fischer- Dieskau (1925–2012), who deserves a neologism for his encyclopaedic recordings. DFD performs alongside his wife, the Romanian-Hungarian soprano Júlia Várady (b 1941), who tamps down her considerable operatic temperament for the occasion. Fischer-Dieskau, known to colleagues as Fidi, is seconded magisterially by his long-time accompanist Hartmut Höll. The programme builds in interest, from lightweight works by the Mendelssohn siblings to the more consequential Cornelius and Schumann. Mr and Mrs Fidi eschew sentimentality, even in uxorious 19th-century domestic anthems such as Cornelius’s Ich und Du. A certain acid potential in Várady’s …