"In 1941 I went from the opera studio directly to the Metropolitan Opera. I was born in Stockholm, because my mother, a coloratura soprano, was engaged there as a guest. Mother and father were both singers. Both had contracts there, and so to speak "threw" me into the world.

In Norway she made the acquaintance for the first time with someone who would play an important part at least twice in her career. Her mother was singing Oscar in "Ballo in Maschera",and took baby Astrid to the theater, planning to use the lowest drawer in the makeup table as a crib. But it was too high, she was afraid that the baby would fall out, so she took her into the dressing room of the soprano who was singing Amelia, and put her in the lowest drawer there. The name of the soprano was Kirsten Flagstad, to this day Varnay's idol)

Then we went to Norway, and when I was about 4 years old they dragged me with them to Argentina, and from there to North America. My father wanted to bring my mother to New York, there she auditioned for Arthur Bodanzky, the conductor for the German repertory. He wanted to hire her, but no vacancy was free, he said, she should try again in one or two years. I still don't know why she didn't. Maybe she was too proud and thought, if they want me, they should come and look for me. I would have done it differently, I would have gone and kept on knocking until they took me! In the meantime, my father died, and my mother stayed with me in America. I never understood why, since her family lived in Hungary, close to Budapest.
My mother was a mixture of Hungarian, German, and French. My father was partly Hungarian too. I grew up in America, went to school there. Then my mother married an Italian tenor. I had a normal childhood, maybe with the difference that a lot of artists came to visit us.
I studied piano until in the school one day someone discovered my voice. By myself I would never have gotten the idea. The teacher called my mother, and told he thought I had talent. She said, she had wanted to work with me anyway, but we didn't until I got my high- school diploma; I was asked to sing a solo with the school choir, so she gave me my first lessons. That was the end of that until I went to a Met performance one day, and that was the spark that started the fire; I wanted to become a singer. So my mother started teaching me seriously, and I started to study seriously. Then I wrote a great expert from the Met that I wanted to study Wagner, because my mother thought I had the voice for it. He wrote back, inviting me to an audition, and made me promise not to sing publicly for three years, so that I could study the repertoire.<p> This expert was the German coach for Wagner interpretation, Hermann Weigert. Several people recommended him to her, but it was Flagstad's endorsement of him that decided her to write. For the first time Flagstad played a decisive role in Varnay's career. Flagstad valued him enormously, and felt she had learned a great deal from him. Many years later Birgit Nilsson wrote that he was the greatest teacher of interpretation she ever worked with. Varnay seems to have thought even more highly of him than her two great colleagues...he not only became her artistic mentor....she married him.

But after 1 1/2 years I'd studied 14 roles. He wanted to get the opinion of a good friend, it was George Szell, the famous conductor. I sang right through my repertory, and he advised to me audition for Edward Johnson, the manager of the Met. So I did, and he offered me a contract. Later he told someone he didn't know what to do with me, but he wanted me in the company. January 2nd I was to make my debut as Elsa, but fate declared that Lotte Lehmann became indisposed on Dec.6th, and there was no Sieglinde to be found. So he threw me into the performance. It was a matinee, broadcast on the radio. I think he asked Dr. Wallerstein, director of the opera studio, if I could manage the acting. We'd worked through the first act, for the rest I had to try to get along with Melchior and Traubel. Fortunately I'd spent a lot of time in the standingroom, and knew what I supposed to do. So I sang Sieglinde on December 6th, of course the papers were full of it.

This despite that fate that her spectacular debut was pushed off the front pages on Monday because of what happened on Sunday, Dec 7th. The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Since this performance was broadcast, it is available, and shows a singer perfectly at her ease, and on the level of a cast which includes Lauritz Melchior as Siegmung, Helen Traubel singing her first Bruennhilde, Friedrich Schorr as Wotan and Karin Branzell as Fricka.The conductor is Erich Leinsdorf. Even then, she reports, she had the feeling that she was different, that her dramatic style on stage was something new. )

Six days later Traubel became indisposed, and I jumped in as Bruennhilde. It was lucky that I knew nothing about responsibility. Musically I was secure, vocally I was still only half-cooked, so to speak. And then it all started. I had my vocal crises, like everyone, because the voice grew and the muscles didn't, or vice-versa, but in my six or seventh year at the Met it all came together.
In 1948 she gave her European debut at Covent Garden, and then in 1951 she was Lady Macbeth in Florence: The stage director was the great German director and actor Gustav Gruendgens and for the first time she found she had the opportunity to work with a director, who was capable of bringing out all that she felt she had to give. Then 1951 came Wieland Wagner's invitation to sing at Bayreuth.

For the second time, Flagstad had a decisive influence. Wagner asked her first to sing the "Ring" cycles. She refused, saying that the new Bayreuth needed a new generation of singers, and recommended Varnay. Varnay didn't have the time to go to Germany for an audition. Wieland Wagner asked 28 artists for their opinion of her, and decided on the strength of their recommendations to hire her unseen and unheard. The only time in the history of the Festspiele that this happened.The rest, as they say, is history.

My first role there was Bruennhilde in two "Ring" cycles. That became a tradition for 17 years; Bayreuth every summer. Than the festival in Munich, later Salzburg, 56 or 57 Zurich.

The part of the interview about her career ends here. In 1955 she left the Met because of problems with Rudolf Bing, and the major part of her career continued in Europe, especially Germany. She sang regularly in Duesseldorf, and Stuttgart, which was considered the "winter" Bayreuth, because the Bayreuth casts used to sing there, and Wieland Wagner worked there a lot. Her home became Munich, where the audience considered her a goddess, and where she gave her last performance in 1995, 54 years after her Met debut! About 1969, after singing the heaviest dramatic roles for a longer period than almost anyone in history, she gradually gave up the repertory, and started an equally successful second career in "Character" roles: Among other things, this brought her back home to the Met, where she returned in 1974 after an absence of 18 years.