Golden Voices:
Interview with Ina Souez: Program Two

In the second of two self-contained one hour programs originally recorded in 1960, Anthony Boucher interviews soprano Ina Souez, about her career as an opera singer. Although Souez spent much of her time performing in the great European opera houses during the 1920s and 30s, she was in fact born to a family of Cherokee decent in Colorado in 1903. Souez initially studied with the Canadian singer Florence Hinman, before moving to Milan at the age of 18, where she quickly made an impression and was soon performing across Europe. She married an English diplomat in the 1930s, moving to the U.K. where she became a regular performer at the influential Glyndebourne Festival and Covent Garden. After World War II, she largely gave up opera and instead toured extensively as a jazz singer performing with Spike Jones’ band the City Slickers, before retiring from the stage and working as a vocal coach. This interview focuses on Ina Souez’s many years with the Glyndebourne Festival Opera in Sussex England. Founded in 1934 by John Christie, the Glyndebourne Festival Opera quickly gained a reputation as one of the finest opera festivals in the United Kingdom, where performers and audience members both enjoyed a sumptuous setting and impeccably provided provisions. With a lengthy rehearsal schedule that virtually guaranteed near perfect performances, recordings made at Glyndebourne in the 1930s, and particularly of the Mozart operas that were their specialty, have remained in print up to the present day, selections of which are included in this program. Unlike many of her contemporary prima donnas, the ever cheerful Ms. Souez has nothing but good things to say about her colleagues, and she is perfectly delightful as she reminisces about the many talented singers she had the pleasure of working with or seeing perform.