va Bach: The Essentials

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.

Historically, Franz Schubert's lieder was first known only through a handful of standards sung in salons (often translated into the local language) and through extracts from his major cycles. Over time, the cycles became complete, and the list of songs considered masterpieces continued to grow. The record was not for nothing in this progressive discovery of neglected territories. The almost complete engraving by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in the 1970s for Deutsche Grammophon obviously marked a turning point; we then realized that it was not little-known islets that were emerging, but an Atlantis.