Elisabeth Schwarzkopf

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Lore & Background

Schwarzkopf was born on 9 December 1915 in Jarotschin in the Province of Posen in Prussia, Germany (now in Poland). She performed her first opera in 1928 as Eurydice in a school production of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice in Magdeburg, Germany. In 1934 she began musical studies at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik, where her singing tutor, Lula Mysz-Gmeiner, attempted to train her to be a mezzo-soprano. She later trained under Maria Ivogün, and in 1938 joined the Deutsche Oper. Her professional debut was on 15 April 1938 as the Second Flower Maiden in act 2 of Wagner's Parsifal at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. In 1940 she was awarded a full contract with the Deutsches Opernhaus, a condition of which was that she had to join the Nazi party. Her relationship with the Nazi Party has been discussed repeatedly; she made contradictory statements regarding her membership (Member No. 7,548,960) and performances before Nazi party conferences and for Waffen-SS units. In 1942 she was invited to sing with the Vienna State Opera, where her roles included Konstanze in Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Musetta and later Mimì in Puccini's La bohème, and Violetta in Verdi's La traviata. After the war, Schwarzkopf was granted Austrian citizenship in 1947 to enable her to sing abroad with the Vienna State Opera. She toured with the Vienna State Opera to London's Royal Opera House on 16 September 1947 as Donna Elvira in Mozart's Don Giovanni, and to La Scala on 28 December 1948 as the Countess in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. In March 1946 she auditioned for Walter Legge, who signed her to an exclusive EMI contract; they married on 19 October 1953 in Epsom, Surrey, and she acquired British citizenship by marriage. In the 1960s she concentrated nearly exclusively on five operatic roles: Donna Elvira, Countess Almaviva, Fiordiligi, Countess Madeleine in Strauss's Capriccio, and the Marschallin. Her last operatic performance was as the Marschallin on 31 December 1971 at La Monnaie in Brussels. After her husband's death in 1979, she retired and taught master classes around the world, notably at the Juilliard School. She died in her sleep during the night of 2–3 August 2006 at her home in Schruns, Vorarlberg, Austria, aged 90.

Reader's Guide

Elisabeth Schwarzkopf's significance lies in her status as one of the foremost lyric sopranos of the 20th century, particularly celebrated for her interpretations of lieder and the operas of Mozart and Richard Strauss. Her discography is considerable both in quality and quantity, distinguished by her Mozart and Richard Strauss operatic portrayals, her two commercial recordings of Strauss's Four Last Songs, and her recordings of lieder, especially those of Hugo Wolf. She is generally considered to have been the greatest German lyric soprano of the twentieth century and one of the finest Mozart singers of all time with an 'indescribably beautiful' voice. However, her legacy is complicated by her Nazi Party membership and contradictory statements about it. The Grove Book of Opera Singers concludes: 'Although she dismissed her [Nazi Party] membership as a professional necessity, her reputation has remained tarnished by what seems to have been an active party membership.' Charles Scribner III, writing in The New Criterion, has defended her party affiliation on the grounds that she was the daughter of an anti-Nazi dissident living in constant fear of the authorities. Her career included the world premiere of Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress on 11 September 1951 as Anne Trulove, and she received numerous awards including the Lilli Lehmann Medal in 1950, the title Deutsche Kammersängerin in 1961, the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1974, and was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1992.

Did You Know?

• Schwarzkopf performed her first opera in 1928 as Eurydice in a school production of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice in Magdeburg, Germany.
• In 1940, a condition of her full contract with the Deutsches Opernhaus was that she had to join the Nazi party (Member No. 7,548,960).
• She sang four brief cameo roles in films produced by Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels.
• When invited in 1958 to select her eight favourite records on the BBC's Desert Island Discs, Schwarzkopf chose seven of her own recordings and an eighth of Karajan conducting the Rosenkavalier prelude.
• Her ashes, and those of Walter Legge, were buried next to her parents in Zumikon near Zürich, where she had lived from 1982 to 2003.