Inge Borkh.(opera singer, profile)

It is a popular conceit, when recalling the most recent Golden Age in opera, to claim that Maria Callas defined the concept of singing-actress for Western civilization, once and for all. She was, of course, a great practitioner. But she was neither the first nor the last.

Take the case of Ingeborg Simon, better known in the opera world as Inge Borkh. In the 1950s and '60s, she put her special stamp of passion on any number of tempestuous heroines. It was a passion embellished, to a degree, with glamour. She triumphed in a wide repertory of challenges -- Lady Macbeth, Aida, Tosca, Turandot, Magda Sorel in The Consul lots of difficult modern opera, a smattering of Wagner, Leonore in Fidelio and, most important, Strauss heroines. Two of these sealed her international fate: Salome and Elektra.

It wasn't as if she owned either part. She had competitors. Ljuba Welitsch, whose all-too-brief heyday came a bit earlier, drenched many stages with her own hot blood as the virginal Princess of Judea. Birgit Nilsson, whose lengthy heyday came a bit later, sliced through Strauss's massive orchestra with elemental force. Confronting the psychological agonies and fatal ecstasies of Agamemnon's daughter, Astrid Varnay dealt in a broader scale of interpretive virtues and seemed bigger than life.

Borkh played by her own rules. Even when portraying monstrous heroism, lust or misery, she somehow managed to exude the quality we used to label femininity, not to mention generosity and an innate humanity. One sensed a certain frailty beneath her bravado. Emotional intensity was her specialty, yet she never confused it with hysteria. Exaggeration was not her style.

And her voice? It's hard to remember that wonderful voice without recalling her face. Both were vibrant, luminous, sensuous. Both were used aggressively yet gracefully in pursuit of honest communication. Borkh did not deal in cliches.

She came to opera at a very early age from the so-called legitimate theater, and she also had trained as a dancer. That training always informed her work. Drama was in her veins. After retiring from opera, she extended her stage career with notable engagements that involved acting, not singing. Then came her uniquely disarming cabaret act, in which she dared turn chanteuse, mocking her erstwhile diva profile. The souvenir recording, Inge Borkh singt ihre Memoiren, is still available on a Preiser CD. The title of her breezy autobiography, published in 1996, tells it all: Ich komm' vom Theater Nicht los.... Loose translation: "I Can't Get Away from the Theater."

Most published sources claim that Inge Borkh was born in Mannheim on May 26, 1917. She has always disputed the year. "One dictionary got it wrong at the beginning," she insists, "and then everyone printed the mistake. It made my poor mother crazy."