Julia Prokopi

Orfeo honours Júlia Várady as one of the most important sopranos of the second half of the 20th century with the release of this 10-album boxed set "The Orfeo Recordings" on the occasion of her 80th anniversary on 1st September. A significant number of opera lovers and connoisseurs maintain that Maria Callas’ mantle ought to have passed to Júlia Várady, and that the (now eighty-year-old) Romanian-Hungarian-German soprano actually should, in her day, have ascended the international throne of the prima donna assoluta.

Julia Varady is a highly respected soprano who has had a major European career and considerable success elsewhere. She comes from a fabled part of Rumania that used to belong to Hungary and is home to most of Rumania's ethnic Hungarian population. She studied at the Conservatory in Cluj (formerly Klausenberg), then at the conservatory in the capital city of Bucharest. She returned to Cluj and in 1960 gained a contract with the Cluj Opera and quickly was given the leading roles in the lyric-dramatic repertory, including Judith in Bluebeard's Castle, Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, Butterfly in Madama Butterfly (after originally playing the short part of Kate Pinkerton), the Marriage of Figaro (in which she sang, at various times, all three soprano roles), Turandot (as Liù), Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana, and Desdemona in Verdi's Otello. During this period she also made guest appearances at the National Opera of Bucharest and in Budapest, Hungary.