Arda Mandikian obituary
Powerful Greek soprano who was a specialist in French song
John Amis
guardian.co.uk,
Wednesday 25 November 2009 18.33 GMT
Arda Mandikian, left, as the ghost, with Jennifer Vyvyan as the
governess, in the English Opera Group’s production of Benjamin
Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, 1954 Photograph: Denis De
Marney/Hulton Archive
The Greek soprano Arda Mandikian, who has died aged 85, was a powerful
presence on stage or concert platform, appearing to be much taller
than she really was. Her face was not only beautiful but
awe-inspiring, like an ancient statue, with a noble nose that seemed
to start in the depths of her forehead. Of Armenian Greek stock, she
was born in what was historically Smyrna, now Izmir, on Turkey’s
Aegean coast.
Arda studied at the Athens Conservatory with Elvira de Hidalgo and
Alexandra Trianti. Two English friends, James Matthews and Alan
Collingridge, brought her to London in 1948. The following year she
sang at Morley college, Lambeth, and later recorded, for HMV, half a
dozen Delphic hymns that had been discovered in 1893. They dated back
to the first century, were etched in stone and miraculously contained
vocal notation. The hymns brought her into contact with the composer
Egon Wellesz, who taught at Oxford University and was an expert in
Byzantine music.
Also at Oxford, Jack Westrup, a professor of music, heard her and
engaged her to sing Dido in Berlioz’s epic opera The Trojans, which
was staged for the first time in its entirety by the Oxford University
opera club, directed by Westrup in 1950.
The following year she took the title role in a comic opera by Wellesz
called Incognita, and in 1952 returned to The Trojans for a recording
under the baton of Hermann Scherchen, released three years later. She
sounds every inch the tragic Carthaginian queen, and her singing in
Dido’s death scene has surely never been eclipsed, even by Janet
Baker. She then sang the Sorceress in a 1953 recording of Purcell’s
Dido and Aeneas – a Gramophone review finding her "sufficiently
spiteful" – with Kirsten Flagstad as Dido.
Arda’s first three roles at the Royal Opera House came in successive
months: as one of the nieces in Britten’s Peter Grimes in November
1953; as Musetta in Puccini’s La Bohème that December; and in the
title role of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Le Coq d’Or in January 1954. She also
sang Handel at Sadler’s Wells, and Britten composed the part of the
ghost Miss Jessel for her in his The Turn of the Screw (1954, with a
recording the following year). With his understanding of voices, he
wrote a part that sounds like Arda, whoever sings it.
She specialised in French song. I recall in particular an outstanding
account of Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’Été at the Wigmore Hall, London.
Although her voice was at its best in slow music, she managed to shine
in the quicksilver brilliance of Britten’s Les Illuminations.
She was an outspoken critic of the Greek junta of 1967-74, and for
that reason her career was hampered. Offers from abroad were turned
down since she feared that if she left Greece, she might not be
allowed to return, and would not then be able to look after her ailing
mother and her stepfather.
After the generals had gone, Arda went regularly to London until a
recent deterioration in her health. From 1974 for eight years she
acted as assistant director of the new opera centre in Athens, working
with her great friend Christos Lambrakis.
A good friend, she was warm and sympathetic – a dab hand at cooking a
moussaka. She was extremely sensitive, which made sitting with her in
an audience hazardous. A death on stage would induce loud sobs, a
cinematic shoot-out would cause her to keel over as if she herself had
been shot, and after a performance of Schubert’s Winterreise by
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau she took to her bed almost paralysed with
melancholy for two whole days. There were strong relationships in her
life, but no marriages.
– Arda Mandikian, soprano, born 1 September 1924; died 8 November 2009