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Until the classic 1962 film version of Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, starring soprano [ELISABETH SCHWARZKOPF] as the Marschallin, is released in North America on DVD, we have to content ourselves with this 25-minute excerpt (the finale of Act I), filmed in London the preceding year by the BBC. Needless to say, Schwarzkopfs finely detailed portrait remains one of the wonders of her, or any, age.

Soprano [Elisabeth Schwarzkopf] celebrated her 80th birthday on December 19. To mark the occasion, the enterprising publisher Amadeus Press released the first major study of the distinguished German - born soprano to appear in English. Given her reputation and importance in the world of opera and art song during the 1950s, '60s and early '70s, it is somewhat surprising that such a work has not appeared sooner. Together with Maria Callas, Schwarzkopf dominated the recording industry, particularly with her matchless recordings of lieder, as well as the operas of Mozart and Richard Strauss.

EDS: Moving on Arts and Opinion wires; guard against duplication.

The confer:, a Lieder recital, was arranged by local impresario Reginald Vincent, who looked rather overwhelmed at the singer's tribute to himself from the platform. In a pleasingly varied programme of songs by Beethoven, Brahms. Mozarl. Mahler, Richard Straus and Hugo Wolf, she was on particularly good torn in the more dramatic works like Mahler's 1ively Anthony of Padas's Ser-mon to the Fishes and Richard Strauss's beautiful and deeply emotional Rest My Soul.\"

This is a remarkable historical document.

[Elisabeth Schwarzkopf] could work such magic on song after song, capturing the uneasy nocturnal tranquillity of Mozart's Abendempfindung, the whimsicalities of Schumann, the pithiness of Hugo Wolf, the severe beauty of Bach. But it was [Schubert], above all, whose music inspired her and with which she wholly identified. An old Columbia shellac disc, coupling Die Forelle with Seligkeit, released soon after the Second World War, provided perhaps the first clue, at least in Britain, to the singer she was in the process of becoming. Though I bought it, as a schoolboy enthusiast, purely for The Trout, it was the radiant portrayal of happiness in the three verses of the backup song that captivated me. Intoxicated by its beauty, I played it again and again, vowing to marry her when I was older, though it was Walter Legge, EMI's formidable record producer, who was to win her. Although more recent singers, particularly Brigitte Fassbaender, have found a vein of uncertainty beneath the shining surface of Seligkeit, Schwarzkopf found only bliss and serenity, thereby waltzing her way into my adolescent heart and those, no doubt, of countless other young listeners.