Melanie Kurt

Melanie Kurt (born January 8, 1880 in Vienna , † March 11, 1941 in New York City ) was an Austrian opera singer ( soprano ).

Life

Melanie Kurt first studied piano in her hometown and later singing. Finally she moved to Berlin, where Marie Lehmann , the sister of the soprano Lilli Lehmann , became her teacher. She initially performed as a pianist between 1897 and 1900. In 1902 she made her debut at the Lübeck City Theater as Elisabeth in Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser .

Engagements at the Leipzig Opera House followed (1903 to 1904), then, after further studies, in Berlin, and from 1905 to 1908 in Braunschweig. From 1908 Berlin was her artistic home, first the Court Opera (until 1912), then the German Opera House in Charlottenburg (until 1915).

Her actual career began in Berlin, which also had an impact in her first guest performances, for example at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London from 1910, or at the Salzburg Mozart Festival of 1910, the forerunner of the Salzburg Festival . Later there were appearances at La Scala in Milan , the Vienna and Dresden State Operas and the National Theater in Munich .

Kurt reached a high point in her career in 1914 as the successor to the great Olive Fremstad at the Metropolitan Opera in New York . This engagement ended, however, when the USA entered the First World War in 1917. From that year, Wagner operas were no longer performed in the USA. Kurt initially stayed in America, but found no employment there after the war and returned to Germany in 1919.

In the years that followed, she sang mainly at various Berlin houses and the Leipzig Opera, as well as in Stuttgart, Dresden, Vienna and at the Wagner Festival in Sopot (1922), at that time a serious competitor to the Bayreuth Festival .

In the late 1920s, the singer moved gradually from the stage and worked increasingly as a teacher, first in Berlin, then - after the seizure of power of the Nazis - in Vienna. In 1938, as a Jew, she also had to flee Austria and emigrated to the USA. She lived in New York until her death.

Repertoire and meaning

In view of the obstacles that Kurt's career experienced through the First World War and later through the rise of National Socialism, one has to speak of an extraordinary career.

This is also supported by her extraordinarily large and diversified repertoire: Although she celebrated her greatest successes as a Wagner singer - she sang Isolde in Tristan und Isolde 49 times at the Met alone in just three years - she also sang Verdi parts ( Aida , Amelia in Un ballo in maschera ), Beethoven's Fidelio , Mozart's Pamina ( Die Zauberflöte ) and Donna Anna Don Giovanni , Rachel in Halévy's Jüdin, operas by Ruggiero Leoncavallo , Richard Strauss ( Marschallin in Rosenkavalier ), Christoph Willibald Gluck and Handel .

The music critic Jürgen Kesting closes the article about Kurt in his book about the great singers of the 20th century with the words: "A wonderful voice and a central singer." (P. 246)

literature

• Kesting, Jürgen: The great singers of the 20th century; ECON Verlag GmbH, Düsseldorf, 1993; ISBN 3-517-07987-1

Web links

• Media from and about Melanie Kurt in the catalog of the German National Library
• mild-und-leise.de