Christa Ludwig was a German mezzo-soprano and sometime dramatic soprano, distinguished for her performances of opera, lieder, oratorio, and other major religious works like masses, passions, and solos in symphonic literature. Her performing career spanned almost half a century, from the late 1940s until the early 1990s.
Franz Schreker was an Austrian composer, conductor, librettist, teacher and administrator. Primarily a composer of operas, Schreker developed a style characterized by aesthetic plurality, timbral experimentation, strategies of extended tonality and conception of total music theatre into the narrative of 20th-century music.
Evelyn Shulman Lear was an American operatic soprano. Between 1959 and 1992, she appeared in more than forty operatic roles, appeared with every major opera company in the United States and won a Grammy Award in 1966. She was well known for her musical versatility, having sung all three main female roles in Der Rosenkavalier. Lear was also known for her work on 20th century pieces by Robert Ward, Alban Berg, Marvin David Levy, Rudolf Kelterborn and Giselher Klebe. She was married to the American bass-baritone Thomas Stewart until his death in 2006.
Pauline Maria de Ahna (also known as Pauline Strauss was a German operatic soprano and the wife of composer Richard Strauss. Her singing career was closely tied to her husband's career as a conductor and composer. From 1890 until 1894 she was committed to the Staatskapelle Weimar and from 1894 until 1897 she was committed to the Bavarian State Opera, during which times her husband was the principal conductor of those theaters. She also sang with her husband conducting at the Bayreuth Festival and in the world premiere of his first opera Guntram. Other houses at which performed included the Berlin State Opera, La Monnaie, and the Liceu. Her repertoire included leading roles in the operas of Beethoven, Humperdinck, Mozart, von Weber, and Wagner. After she gave birth to their son Franz Strauss in 1897 she retired from the opera stage. She thereafter continued to periodically perform in concerts of her husband's music, particularly Lieder. Strauss credited her as his muse for many of his compositions, including the title role in Salome, the Countess Madeleine in Capriccio, and the Four Last Songs among others.
Marie Gutheil-Schoder was an important German soprano.
Anja Harteros is a German soprano. Since winning the 1999 Cardiff Singer of the World competition she has been particularly associated with the Bavarian State Opera and enjoyed an international career.
Margarethe Arndt-Ober was a German opera singer who had an active international career during the first half of the twentieth century. A highly skilled contralto, Ober enjoyed a particularly long and fruitful association with the Berlin State Opera from 1907 to 1944. She also was notably a principal singer at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City between 1913 and 1917.
Die Gezeichneten is an opera in three acts by Franz Schreker with a German-language libretto by the composer, based on Frank Wedekind's play Hidalla.
Anja Kampe is a German-Italian operatic soprano. She is notable for her performances in major opera houses of the works of Richard Wagner and other German and Austrian composers.
Barbara Scherler is a German classical mezzo-soprano and contralto singer in opera and concert. She was a member of the Deutsche Oper Berlin and active in performances and recordings of operas of the 20th century.
Edyth Walker was an American opera singer who had an active international career from the 1890s through the 1910s. She began her career performing roles from the mezzo-soprano repertory, but later successfully added several soprano parts to her repertoire as well. While she did perform in Italian and French language operas, she had a clear affinity for works in the German language. She particularly excelled in the operas of Richard Wagner. After retiring from the stage, she was active as a voice teacher in both France and the United States. Her voice is preserved on several gramophone recordings, made mainly for His Master's Voice, between 1902-08.
Gabriele Schnaut was a German classical singer who started her operatic career as a mezzo-soprano in 1976 and changed to dramatic soprano in 1985. She performed at the Bayreuth Festival from 1977, in the filmed Jahrhundertring, to 2000. After a breakthrough performance as Richard Wagner's Isolde at the Hamburgische Staatsoper in 1988, she became a leading dramatic soprano on the stages of the world in roles such as Wagner's Brünnhilde and Richard Strauss' Elektra. From 2008, she ventured into dramatic mezzo-soprano character roles such as Klytämnestra in Elektra, Herodias in Salome and Kostelnicka Buryjovka in Leoš Janáček's Jenufa.
Hanna-Elisabeth Müller is a German soprano in opera, concert and recitals.
Birgit Remmert is a German operatic mezzo-soprano and contralto who has appeared in major European opera houses, concert halls and festivals. She has performed title roles such as Dalila, Penthesilea, and Iokaste in an opera composed for her.
Sara Hershkowitz is an American coloratura soprano, who made an international career based in Germany. She is known for roles in Mozart and Strauss operas, such as Konstanze, the Queen of the Night, Sophie and Zerbinetta, but also for contemporary music such as Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre.
Albert Dohmen is a German operatic bass-baritone who is known internationally for performing leading roles by Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss. He has also worked in concert halls and given lieder recitals.
Sylvia Geszty was a Hungarian-German operatic coloratura soprano who appeared internationally, based first at the Staatsoper Berlin in East Berlin and from 1970 at the Staatstheater Stuttgart. She is remembered as Mozart's Queen of the Night and an ideal Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos, but also performed Baroque opera and in the world premiere of Kurt Schwaen's Leonce und Lena.
Jennifer Holloway is an American operatic mezzo-soprano and soprano who has made an international career performing at leading opera houses and festivals. She began as a mezzo-soprano singing roles such as Adalgisa in Bellini's Norma, and moved to soprano roles such as Salome and Grete Graumann in Schreker's Der ferne Klang.
Enid Szánthó was a Hungarian operatic contralto. From 1928, she belonged to the ensemble of the Vienna State Opera and appeared at the Bayreuth Festival from 1930, first as Erda in Der Ring des Nibelungen. She gave guest performances in opera and concert in Florence, London, Berlin, Paris, and New York at the Metropolitan Opera, where she made her debut as Fricka in 1938. Her career was de facto ended later that year when Austria came under the Nazi regime.
Rosa von Milde, also Rosalie von Milde, néeRosa Agthe was a German operatic soprano and voice teacher. She was a leading singer at the Weimar Court Theatre from 1848 to 1867, which flourished when Franz Liszt directed it. She created, among others, the roles of Elsa in Wagner's Lohengrin, conducted by Liszt in 1850, and Margiana in Der Barbier von Bagdad by Peter Cornelius in 1858.
