Margarethe Arndt-Ober

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Arndt-Ober as Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni 1917
Margarethe Arndt-Ober with family in 1916

Margarethe Arndt-Ober , née Margarethe Ober (born April 15, 1885 in Berlin ; died March 17, 1971 in Bad Sachsa ) was a German opera singer ( mezzo-soprano / alto occasionally different voices).

Life

Margarethe Ober received her vocal training in Berlin, first from Benno Stolzenberg , then from Arthur Arndt, whom she married in 1910.

Ober made her stage debut in 1906 at the Frankfurt Opera and Theater in the role of Azucena in Giuseppe Verdi's Il trovatore . In 1907, after a brief engagement in Stettin , she was engaged at the Berlin Court Opera , with which she remained connected for over 35 years. After initially small roles, the breakthrough came in 1908 as Amneris in Aida , in the same year in the title role of Jules Massenet's Thérèse . In 1910 she sang in the world premiere of Poia (composer Arthur Nevin ). In 1913 she gave the Eboli in Verdi's Don Carlos .

From 1913 to 1917 Arndt-Ober was also a member of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City , where she took on many roles that Ernestine Schumann-Heink had previously sung. On November 13, 1913, she made her debut there as Ortrud in Wagner's Lohengrin . She also gave premieres of Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier , Catherine in The Taming of the Shrew , the Witch in King's Children and Alisoun in The Canterbury Pilgrims (composer Reginald De Koven , 1859-1920). Other roles besides those already known to her from Germany were Brangäne in Tristan and Isolde , Dalila in Samson et Dalila , Eglantine in Euryanthe , Erda in Das Rheingold and Siegfried , Fricka in Die Walküre , Waltraute in Götterdämmerung , Laura in La Gioconda and Nancy in Martha . Her last and 182nd appearance at the Metropolitan was on April 27th as Marina in Boris Godunow .

On April 2, 1917, rumors circulated in the audience that the declaration of war against Germany was imminent. In view of patriotic outbursts, a performance was briefly interrupted, after this break Arndt-Ober suddenly passed out. According to another account, she is said to have directed the curse of Amneris against the audience in a burst of anger. After the USA entered the war in November 1917, she lost her position at the Metropolitan Opera and was interned until the end of the war. She only returned to Germany in 1919 and resumed her career at the Berlin State Opera.

Notable roles in world premieres were Kostelnička in Jenůfa by Leoš Janáček in 1924, Alardis in The Singing Devil by Franz Schreker in 1928, Arabella in The Great Sinner by Eduard Künneke in 1935 and Aase in Peer Gynt by Werner Egk in 1938.

In addition, Arndt-Ober appeared almost every year from 1922 to 1944 in the forest opera Sopot and gave guest appearances on European stages in Spain, Holland and Norway as well as at the major German opera theaters. Towards the end of the Second World War , she mainly sang in front of soldiers and officers.

She spent her twilight years in Bad Sachsa, where she died in 1971.

literature

  • Jürgen Kesting : The great singers of the 20th century , Düsseldorf 1993
  • Jeffery S. McMillan: Margarethe Arndt-Ober [biography and discography]. In: The Record collector Volume 63 No. 3, September 2017, pages 170–191. ISSN 0034-1568

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Margarethe Arndt-Ober at Operissimo  on the basis of the Great Singer Lexicon
  2. ↑ a b Andrea Suhm-Binder, biography of Margerethe Arndt-Ober on Cantabile-subito
  3. ^ New York Times , April 3, 1917
  4. ↑ Ursula Köhler-Lutterbeck; Monika Siedentopf: Lexicon of 1000 women , Bonn 2000, p. 28. ISBN 3801202763
personal data
SURNAME Arndt-Ober, Margarethe
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ober, Margarethe (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German opera singer (mezzo-soprano / alto)
DATE OF BIRTH April 15, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 17th March 1971
Place of death Bad Sachsa