I had heard Astrid Varnay on her few recordings and some private tapes in the late 50s and early 60s. When I heard my first
few Bayreuth performances on radio, I was really blown away and despaired that I would never hear her in performance in
New York since she was completely settled in Europe. You can imagine my excitement when I learned she was to sing Elektra
with the Philharmonic!

Tickets were sold out for all of the performances and I spent a long late afternoon and early evening in Lincoln Center Plaza
trying to buy tickets from someone and finally, with my good friend George C. someone came along and sold us two very good seats.

I knew William Steinberg as the conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony from my days at Penn State and occasional week end concert
going at the Syria Mosque in the 50s! After that, I heard a sensational series of Die Walküre (four or five in all) at the old Met
with Nilsson, Vickers, London and Rysanek which he conducted there. The idea of Elektra with Varnay, conducted by Steinberg seemed
pretty exciting to this then 22 year-old! You'll get an idea of the intensity of the performance, how driven and dramatic it was - at
eighty eight minutes one of the shortest I've heard! My memories of the performance are vivid today and I can still feel the excitement.
I have the complete performance to listen to, and hearing it after all these years only strengthens the impression I
had of an experience I would never forget.

After that time, Varnay became one of my two or three operatic icons and I enjoyed
her a few years later as Klytamnästra with the Cleveland Orchestra at Carnegie Hall and then in her new career at the Metropolitan
as Herodias in "Salome", Kostelnitchka in "Jenúfa" and again as Klytamnästra and who can ever forget her wonderful
Leocadia Begbick in Weill's "Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny". In the Green Room at (what was known then as) Philharmonic Hall,
I hardly knew what to say to her. I exchanged some words with Maestro Steinberg
and then nervously clutched Astrid Varnay's outstretched hand. I mumbled a few things and actually choked up.
She knew, she must have seen it in my face, I could tell from her smile. She had reached me and we both knew it.

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Years later I sat down to write to her to tell her how wonderful I thought she was and how much I had grown to love her singing. I was never
a groupie or an autograph hound, even during the thirty years I lived in Manhattan, but she sent me back this picture, signed, which I have on a
book case smiling at me every day - always a reminder of one of the great moments of my musical life - the night I heard Astrid Varnay for the first time.