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Remembering Soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, one of the greatest classical singers of the 20th century, died Aug. 3 at her home in the village of Schruns, western Austria, at the age of 90. She was the last survivor of a generation of sopranos that ruled the world’s stages in the 1950s and 1960s and included, besides the German-born diva, the Italian Renata Tebaldi, the Greek Maria Callas, the Swedish Birgitt Nilson and the Spanish Victoria de los Angeles. In an international career spanning 40 years she became especially famous for her singing in the operas of Mozart and Richard Strauss. She is forever associated to the role of Marschallin in Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier. Her strength and beauty in the higher reaches of the soprano register allowed her once to surreptitiously “lend” two high notes to the aging Kirsten Flagstad for a recording of Tristan und Isolde, a trick that led to quite a bit of controversy. All over the world classical audiences loved Schwarzkopf as much for her opera performances as for her more intimate concert recitals of lieder, the songs composed by German and Austrian artists such as Schubert and Hugo Wolf, a genre in which she had no rival. She sang mainly in Berlin and Vienna and toured the world’s grand opera houses: La Scala, the Royal Opera House, the Metropolitan, the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. She was born in Jarotschin, a city that now is part of Poland, in 1915. Her Prussian family eventually moved to Berlin, where she attended the Hoschschule für Musik. She enrolled in the Nazi student organization and a few years later, in 1940, joined the Nazi party, a move that would later haunt her, although she dismissed it as something “akin to joining a trade union.” An iron-willed artist in setting her own artistic standards, she became an exacting taskmistress to her students after she embarked on a teaching career once she retired from singing in 1971. The German government bestowed upon her the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit in 1974. In her later years, she lived for some time in Switzerland and then in Austria. She became a British citizen and was made Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1992. She was married to the British producer Walter Legge, who was her manager and promoted her records with EMI, the company for which he was artistic director. Legge died in 1979 after a heart attack. Schwarkopf has left behind a treasure trove of recordings that, in several cases, constitute the standard by which subsequent soprano recordings are judged. August 10, 2006
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