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Show Operatic Star Has Hew Hobby, Hurling Puns NEW YORK. One of the rarest things in the world is an opera star without a hobby. Asked to talk about music, they talk instead about their collection of autographed auto-graphed baseballs, or toy railroads, or photographs. But now there is one with a new hobby puns! It is Astrid Varnay, the Metropolitan's Metro-politan's soprano. She differs from the others in this; Instead of saving sav-ing her puns, she passes them out freely. She is a high dramatic soprano, and has a new hydromatic auto. The old auto was called "Grangal," from Bruenhilde's steed "Grane," and from Galileo, who, despite the ban of the church on his claim, said of the world: "And still it moves." Once when an Interviewer wanted to know her favorite role, she said it was with butter. Mindful Mind-ful of a B natural which stumps some sopranos in "Die Walkuere." she has as her motto: "Always B Natural." Always Natural And natural is what this popular "Met" singer always is, whether at Carnegie Hall in the spectacularly successful "Elektra," or on the "Met" stage, on long tours In this country and abroad, or cross the lunch table. Though she tried clerking in a bookstore, typing, and playing the piano she made he New York debut as a pianist she has undergone so many vocal vo-cal influences that it seemed inevitable in-evitable she should be a singer. Her father and mother were both singers; her husband is Herman Weigert, for more than 10 years an assistant conductor at the "Met" Bnd npw Miss Varnay's voice teacher and accompanist. Kirsten Flagstad has moved In and out of her career and her family's. It was Mi6s Varnay's father, she says, who gave Flag-stad Flag-stad her first chance with the opera company which he and others founded In Christiana. Flagstad once auditioned Miss Varnay. And Flagstad, as well as Miss Varnay, will be back at the "Met." Need Good Singers "The more good singers there are in the 'Met,' the better," she says. If we're going to have a golden age of our own, we have to have the finest voices." She made her "Met" debut in 1941 as Sieglinde, stepping into the part at the last minute. The performance per-formance was her first appearance on any stage as a singer, and her first time in this role with an orchestra; and it came after only two years of voice study. Her present repertory is said to Include a greater number of leading Wagnerian Wag-nerian roles than any other singer. |