"Opera in Heidelberg" a Heidelberg Travel Page by Nemorino

To be fair, I really must give Heidelberg a second chance. My first and only opera experience there was a total disappointment.

Salome, by Richard Strauss, is a nearly impossible opera to cast. The singer of the title role has to be a dramatic soprano with a huge voice that will carry over a full-power 110-piece orchestra, which usually means a Brunnhilde-type in her fifties, on the other hand the character of Salome is supposed to be a spoiled teen-aged princess who is incredibly beautiful and can dance the Dance of the Seven Veils so enticingly that by the end all seven veils are strewn on the floor and her lecherous step-father is reduced to a heap of gibbering aboulia.

Singers who can do all of this are rare, but one of them was scheduled to sing the role of Salome in Heidelberg on March 16, 1997, so my hopes were up really high when I went down there on the train to see her.

Three and a half months earlier I had seen her perform this difficult role in Schwerin, a city in northern Germany where I happened to be on business. Her name was Zehra Yildiz, and the production in Schwerin seemed to have been created with her particular talents in mind. Her singing and acting were superb, and besides that she danced all the way through the opera, not just the Dance of the Seven Veils. During a stormy orchestral interlude as Jochanaan descended into his cistern, Zehra Yildiz as Salome did a wild dance which among other things involved rolling down a broad staircase in time to the music. Listen to that passage on the CD and see if you don't agree that it must have been written exactly for a beautiful dancer to roll down the stairs to!

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Entrance to the City Theater, Heidelberg

So you can imagine my disappointment when I arrived at the theater in Heidelberg and found that there was a different name on the playbill. No announcement, no explanation, just another name, and nobody seemed to know why. Maybe she was sick (shrug), or maybe she had to go to Istanbul to sing Aida (shrug), it was no big deal evidently.

Her replacement sang all the notes, but that was about it. The stage set looked like a mock-up of a modern American prison, and I didn't like the production either. All in all it was the worst Salome performance I've seen yet, or maybe I was just in a bad mood.

Ten months later when the German opera magazine Das Opernglas appeared in my mailbox, I opened to the news section and found a short notice which read:

ZEHRA YILDEZ stood at the beginning of a very promising career when she suddenly and unexpectedly died in a Heidelberg clinic on December 12th of last year. The young Turkish singer was an ensemble member of the State Opera in Istanbul, where she was acclaimed for such roles as Butterfly, Aida, Senta, Salome and most recently as Tosca at the premiere on November 29th. In 1966 she was honored by the Turkish Minister of Culture as Turkey's most successful female singer.
In Germany Zehra Yildez debuted in January 1996 as Senta at the Heidelberg Theater. Here she also sang Leonore in "Fidelio" and Salome, a role with which she also caused a sensation in Schwerin and in Denmark. In the spring of 1998 she was planning debuts in D?sseldorf and Chemnitz as Salome, and in Darmstadt as Chrysothemis ("Elektra").
(Das Opernglas 2/98, page 48, my translation)

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Stage entrance, City Theater Heidelberg

Since then no singer of Salome has had much of a chance with me, not even Doris Brueggemann in Darmstadt, not even Lyuba Kazarnovskaya, Eva Johansson, Helen Field or Nina Warren in Frankfurt (sorry, Nina), not even Eliane Coelho when she sang it in Munich with Bryn Terfel as Jochanaan. They all somehow can't compete with my memory of Zehra Yildiz.

This isn't just me being sentimental because she was beautiful and died young. I have looked up old reviews and found that she was consistently praised by the critics, so this isn't all just my imagination.

After her Heidelberg premiere as Salome a reviewer in Das Opernglas wrote:

She seems to possess undreamed-of physical and vocal reserves, which she was able to mobilize astutely on this evening. Seemingly without effort she spirals up in ecstasy to a high B and simultaneously projects a convincing Salome torn between childish defiance and insatiable desire. ... it should not remained unmentioned that Ms. Yildiz has excellent diction and language accuracy at her command.
(Das Opernglas 3/97, reviewing the premiere on January 15, 1997; my translation.)

Here is part of her obituary that appeared on December 20, 1997, in the Turkish Daily News, quoted from www.turkishdailynews.com:

By Niki Gamm / Turkish Daily News
Istanbul - Zehra Yildiz was only 41 years old when she died this past weekend in Germany of a stroke. Yildiz's last role was Floria Tosca in Puccini's "Tosca" which is being staged by the Istanbul State Opera and Ballet. An attractive blond, she drew art lovers to her with her outstanding performance as she usually did and her unexpected death left people in mourning behind her.
A ceremony was held at the Ataturk Cultural Center and the theater was nearly full. People couldn't keep back their tears.
Cultural Minister Istemihan Talay called her a great artist, expressing for all those who came the sorrow at the lost of such a person. Yekta Kara, the director of the Istanbul State Opera and Ballet described what a charitable, loving person Yildiz was. She spoke of her as a hero of the opera whose death was tragic.
After prayer services at Tesvikiye Mosque, she was laid to rest in Bebek's Asiyan Cemetery.
In her memory a prize will be given every year by the Theater, Opera and Ballet Workers Foundation.
Yildiz had been performing at the Istanbul State Opera and Ballet as a soloist since 1983 and she attracted attention with her powerful voice as well as her acting. Yildiz performed in "Othello," "Madam Butterfly," "Sir Angelica," "Human Voice," "The Masked Ball" and "Aida." She opened a new page in her career with "Salome" whom she played last season. This role brought her "The Best Female Opera Singer" award by the Culture Ministry in the 1994-95 season.
One of the columnists after her death described her as someone who could create miracles. The role in which she most remembered her was the "O, patria mia" aria in Aida where she stands in the moonlight alone and expresses her longing for the motherland which she will never see again. There were other major roles but none which was as powerfully affecting.
Her colleagues say that she was a truly disciplined professional who never took a sick day off. Even if she had a cold acquired during a cold rehearsal, there were no complaints. As well she gave the lie to the idea that sopranos were capricious -- she wasn't.
She was the first soprano in Turkish opera who could sing Wagner and Strauss and she was really just entering her stride at 41. The big roles were still ahead of her.