1. Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was among the foremost singers of lieder, and is renowned for her performances of Viennese operetta, as well as the operas of Mozart, Wagner and Richard Strauss.
22 Facts About Elisabeth Schwarzkopf
1. 2.
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf is considered one of the greatest sopranos of the 20th century.
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In 1934, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf began her musical studies at the Berlin Hochschule fur Musik, where her singing tutor, Lula Mysz-Gmeiner, attempted to train her to be a mezzo-soprano.
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Elisabeth Schwarzkopf later trained under Maria Ivogun, and in 1938 joined the Deutsche Oper.
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Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was banned from taking any new teaching post.
6.
Until Friedrich Schwarzkopf's dismissal, the probability was that the 17-year-old Elisabeth would have studied medicine after passing her Abitur; but now, as the daughter of a banned school teacher, she was not allowed to enter university and she commenced music studies at the Berlin Hochschule fur Musik.
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Elisabeth Schwarzkopf made her professional debut at the Deutsche Oper Berlin on 15 April 1938, as the Second Flower Maiden in act 2 of Richard Wagner's Parsifal.
8.
In 1940 Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was awarded a full contract with the Deutsches Opernhaus, a condition of which was that she had to join the Nazi party.
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Elisabeth Schwarzkopf's defenders argue in favor of her claim that she always strictly separated art from politics and that she was a non-political person.
10.
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf sang four brief cameo roles in films produced by Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, but she was a voice, not a film star.
11.
In 1947, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was granted Austrian citizenship to enable her to sing abroad with the Vienna State Opera.
12.
In 1947 and 1948, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf appeared on tour with the Vienna State Opera at London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden on 16 September 1947 as Donna Elvira in Mozart's Don Giovanni and at La Scala on 28 December 1948, as the Countess in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, which became one of her signature roles.
13.
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf later made her official debut at the Royal Opera House on 16 January 1948, as Pamina in Mozart's The Magic Flute, in performances sung in English, and at La Scala on 29 June 1950 singing Beethoven's Missa solemnis.
14.
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf made her American concert debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on 28 and 29 October 1954, in Strauss's Four Last Songs and the closing scene from Capriccio with Fritz Reiner conducting; her Carnegie Hall debut was a lied recital on 25 November 1956; her American opera debut was with the San Francisco Opera on 20 September 1955 as the Marschallin, and her debut at the Metropolitan Opera on 13 October 1964, as the Marschallin.
15.
In March 1946, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was invited to audition for Walter Legge, an influential British classical record producer and a founder of the Philharmonia Orchestra.
16.
When invited in 1958 to select her eight favourite records on the BBC's Desert Island Discs, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf chose seven of her own recordings, and an eighth of Karajan conducting the Rosenkavalier prelude, as they evoked fond memories of the people she had worked with.
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Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was well received as Alice Ford in Verdi's Falstaff.
18.
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf disregarded doctor's orders to rest and attended Schwarzkopf's final recital two days later in Zurich.
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Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was made a doctor of music by the University of Cambridge in 1976, and became a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1992.
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Elisabeth Schwarzkopf's discography is considerable both in quality and in quantity and is distinguished for 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 Wolf.
21.
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf 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.
22.
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf can be seen in two videotaped performances as the Marschallin:.