Fritzi Massary

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Fritzi Massary in Berlin, 1914
In the operetta Maxim in the Berlin Metropoltheater, 1904
Fritzi Massary, 1929

Fritzi Massary , actually Friederika Massaryk , also Friederike Massary (born March 21, 1882 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; †  January 30, 1969 in Beverly Hills , Los Angeles , United States ) was an Austrian-American singer (soprano) and actress .

Live and act

She grew up in Vienna as the eldest of three daughters in a Jewish merchant family. At the age of 17 she performed at the Landestheater Linz . The second stage was the Carl-Schultze-Theater in Hamburg. Here she made her debut on September 5, 1900 as Molly in Die Geisha von Jones and then took over other operetta roles in the soubrette category. After only one season in Hamburg, she returned to Vienna. From 1901 to 1904 she was successful in Danzers Orpheum , a revue theater . Their only child Elisabeth Maria Karl Liesl († 1979) was born on September 10, 1903 . Father was Karl-Kuno Rollo Graf von Coudenhove (1887–1940). The daughter later married the writer Bruno Frank . Her first marriage, which lasted only a short time, was married to the Berlin ophthalmologist Bernhard Pollack .

Director Richard Schultz of the Metropol Theater , who heard her in Vienna, arranged for her to come to Berlin in August 1904. She performed there for a long time with her partner and compatriot Joseph Giampietro , with whom she made her first sound film experiments that same year, the sound was recorded on a record and the gramophone was mechanically connected to the film projector. However, these early experiments were quickly discarded because the gramophone funnel proved unsuitable for performance in large halls. Her artistic breakthrough as a soprano was at the Metropol Theater . Soon she became the figurehead of this theater. She played in numerous operettas by Paul Lincke and Victor Hollaender . From 1912 onwards she, who had since become a celebrity - people only spoke of the Massary , and the female population conformed to their fashionable tastes - was given almost exclusively to play leading roles. The most famous operetta singer of her time beguiled her audience as the Merry Widow , Czardasfürstin or Madame Pompadour and was often able to carry a quarter of the evening income home in her glamorous roles.

When she married her great love, fellow actor Max Pallenberg on February 20, 1917 , Massary converted to Protestantism.

Massary separated from the Metropol Theater, changed stages several times and negotiated horrendously high fees. She successfully sang records with songs like Why should a woman have no relationship , Josef, oh Josef, what are you so chaste and oh -la-la- t. Charlotte Berend-Corinth created lithographs for advertising purposes in 1919 . She sang the leading roles in the great operettas by Johann Strauss , Jacques Offenbach , Leo Fall and Franz Lehár , Hugo Hirsch , 1923 Der Fürst von Pappenheim , in which Willi Kollo wrote the lyrics for her: A woman like me . She appeared in all the major revue theaters of her time and even at the Salzburg Festival in 1926 . Oscar Straus dedicated several tailor-made operettas to her, which went down in history as “massary operettas”, starting with The Last Waltz and The Pearls of Cleopatra to A Woman Who Knows What She Wants .

Performances of the operetta A woman who knows what she wants were disturbed in Berlin by anti-Semitic SA choirs. Faced with the rise of the National Socialists , Massary and Pallenberg left Germany in 1932. This meant the end of her career. She still played in Vienna and also tried her hand in London - unsuccessfully, because there she no longer sang in her mother tongue. Max Pallenberg was killed in a plane crash near Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic in 1934. Via Switzerland and France emigrated to in 1939 to her daughter in the United States. She settled in Beverly Hills Hollywood , where Franz Werfel , Thomas Mann , Ernst Lubitsch and Lion Feuchtwanger were her neighbors.

After all, she lived, without a comeback, in Beverly Hills until her death . Her urn is in the Forest Lawn Memorial Cemetery in Glendale .

Honors

Filmography

  • 1912: viola
  • 1915: The tunnel
  • 1919: The Rose of Stambul
  • 1919: Fool's Dance of Love

Adaptation

  • Why should a woman not have a relationship? is the title of a Fritzi Massary revue by Edward Lyons. After the actress Ruth Brauer-Kvam received a large, green fan from Fritzi Massary, she staged the operetta evening Die Unschuld vom Lande in the theater in der Josefstadt as a homage to the singer.

literature

Web links

Commons : Fritzi Massary  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ "Metropol-Theater" or "Komische Oper" - the house on Behrenstrasse . ( Memento of the original from February 15, 2013 on WebCite ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.komische-oper-berlin.de
  2. ^ Fritzi Massary songs on CD
  3. ↑ Berlin was at her feet . Deutschlandfunk, January 30, 20199
  4. ↑ Glendale Cemetery
  5. ↑ Office of the Federal President
  6. ^ Fritzi-Massary-Strasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
  7. ↑ James Edward Lyons
  8. ↑ josefstadt.org. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on February 22, 2014 ; Retrieved February 25, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.josefstadt.org
personal data
SURNAME Massary, Fritzi
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Massaryk, Friederika (real name); Massary, Friederike
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian-American singer (soprano) and actress
DATE OF BIRTH March 21, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH January 30, 1969
Place of death Beverly Hills , Los Angeles , United States