Lisa della Casa

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Lisa della Casa with Vico Torriani (1967)

Lisa della Casa (born February 2, 1919 in Burgdorf BE ; † December 10, 2012 in Münsterlingen ) was a Swiss opera singer ( soprano ). She was considered one of the outstanding Strauss and Mozart interpreters.

Life

Lisa Della Casa (1919–2012) opera singer, theater actress. Dialect theater performance "Mier lönd nöd lugg" by director H.Haller. From left to right: Häddy Wettstein, Nelly Ruff, main actress Lisa Della Casa and Lilo Aufdermaur. (1940)
Lisa Della Casa in the leading role in the 1940 theatrical performance Mier lönd nöd lugg

Lisa Della Casa was born as the second child of the ophthalmologist Dr. Francesco Roberto Della Casa (1879–1949) and his wife Magarete (1877–1948) were born. She received singing lessons from the age of 15. After studying singing in Bern and Zurich with Margarethe Haeser and her first appearance in 1941 as an opera singer in Solothurn-Biel in the role of Cio-Cio-San in Puccini's “Madame Butterfly”, her career path was mapped out. She made her debut in 1943 at the Stadttheater Zürich , where she was part of the ensemble until 1950, and sang at the Salzburg Festival for the first time in 1947.

In the film Füsilier Wipf (1938) by Leopold Lindtberg with Paul Hubschmid in the leading role, della Casa played das Vreneli (speaking role). In the 1940 film Mier lönd nöd lugg , Della Casa starred alongside Paul Hubschmid, Max Knapp and Max Werner Lenz .

Della Casa was a member of the Vienna State Opera from 1947 , of the Metropolitan Opera in New York from 1953 to 1968 and a permanent guest of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich and the Salzburg Festival . In 1951 she appeared at the Glyndebourne Festival . A year later she made her debut in Bayreuth under Hans Knappertsbusch. But here it stayed with the one-time appearance, because according to her own statements, she had found the atmosphere to be stiff and pretentious. Also in 1952 she was appointed chamber singer.

family

In 1944 Lisa della Casa was her first marriage to Ernst Geiser, who came from Langenthal , and five years later she divorced him. At the end of 1949 she married the Serbian art historian, musicologist and publicist Dragan Debeljevic (1921–2014) for the second time . In 1951 their daughter Vesna-Rajka was born. A year before that, in 1950, she and her second husband, Dragan Debeljevic, bought Gottlieben Castle on Lake Constance , where she lived in complete seclusion until her death.

Surprisingly, she withdrew from the stage in 1974. The end of her career had to do with a personal stroke of fate - the serious illness of her daughter Vesna. Dragan Debeljevic published her biography a year later under the title “A Life with Lisa Della Casa”.

Lisa della Casa's parents founded a well-known restaurant under the family name in Bern that still exists today.

Lisa Della Casa died on December 10, 2012 in Münsterlingen on Lake Constance.

plant

Lisa della Casa was one of the benchmark personalities of the post-war period, especially in the Mozart and Richard Strauss fields. The beauty of her appearance, the aristocratic nobility of her appearance, the silver timbre, the almost immaculate flawlessness of her vocal line and the plausibility of her design, which combined elegance with intensity, made her exceptional.

As Arabella in Strauss' opera of the same name, according to general consensus, she was an ideal cast that has not been achieved to this day. She sang the part in two complete recordings, one under Solti with George London , one under Keilberth with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau . She was one of the few artists who embodied all three female roles in Rosenkavalier - Marschallin, Octavian, Sophie. No less legendary in Strauss' repertoire were the title role in Ariadne auf Naxos , Chrysothemis in Elektra and the Countess in Capriccio .

In the Mozart class she embodied all the important soprano roles in her field, especially the Countess in Le nozze di Figaro , Donna Elvira and Donna Anna in Don Giovanni , Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte , Ilia in Idomeneo and Pamina in the Magic Flute .

In Bayreuth she only sang Eva in the Meistersinger once . Excursions into the highly dramatic subject were limited. She only tried Salome once in Munich. In the modern field she appeared as the world premiere singer of the opera Der Prozess von Gottfried von Eine in 1953 at the Salzburg Festival under Karl Böhm , in Zurich she had world premieres in 1947 in the operetta Tic-Tac by Paul Burkhard and in 1949 in the opera The Black Spider by Willy Burkhard participated. As a song interpreter della Casa emerged together with the pianist Sebastian Peschko .

Honors

Lisa della Casa has been honored several times, including a. with the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art 1st Class , the Golden Medal of the City of Vienna , the Hans Reinhart Ring and the Golden Opera Medal . She was an Austrian and Bavarian Chamber Singer and an honorary member of the Vienna State Opera . In July 2012 she appointed France Commandeur in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres .

Literature and film portrait

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Chamber singer Lisa della Casa has died. In: orf.at . December 11, 2012
  2. ↑ a b Opera singer Lisa della Casa has died. In: Der Spiegel . December 11, 2012
  3. ↑ 1940, Mier Lönd nöd lugg. Schweizer Film = Film Suisse: official organ of Switzerland, accessed on June 13, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Lisa della Casa in the New York Times , accessed December 11, 2012 (English)
  5. ↑ Lisa Della Casa, biography in: http://www.steffi-line.de/archiv_text/nost_buehne2/03st_casa.htm
personal data
SURNAME Casa, Lisa della
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss opera singer (soprano)
DATE OF BIRTH February 2, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Burgdorf BE
DATE OF DEATH December 10, 2012
Place of death Munsterlingen