International Holocaust Remembrance Day. A few singers.
Oper Frankfurt
During the 1920s the Oper Frankfurt (Frankfurt Opera) had more prominent Jewish singers than any other company in Germany.
In June 1933, the Jewish singers were forced to leave the opera.
All of the Jewish members of Frankfurt Opera were subsequently sent to Auschwitz and other camps where they were murdered.
Among these were:
Baritone Erhard Eduard Wechselmann, opera singer and cantor, was a great German singer who also sang with the Metropolitan Opera in 1890.
While he did most likely sing in the presence of Hitler on several occasions, under the Nazi regime Wechselmann performed for Jewish audiences and on at least one occasion with the contralto Ottilie Metzger-Lattermann who was also to perish in Auschwitz.
Erhard Wechselmann (1895–murdered in Auschwitz in 1943)
~~~~~~~~~~
Contralto Magda Spiegel was one of many gifted, special singers whose voices were silenced in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
She debuted as a 19-year old at the Prague New German Theatre. Although Spiegel was one of Germany’s best-loved singers, she seems to have recorded only four records.
Here is one example. We are very gratefeul to have finally found it on youtube:
https://youtu.be/wRXxopousqc
It is said about her that her name is reduced to a footnote in an opera history book …and yet, what an artist.
There is a street named after her in the city of Frankfurt where she had her enormous singing career at the opera.
Magda Spiegel, (1887– murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau 1944), gave her last concerts at the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Contralto Ottilie Metzger-Lattermann (Ottilie Metzger-Froitzheim) was a splendid singer.
She was the first London Herodias in Strauss’ Salome, at Covent Garden, in 1902. She sang in Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, Prague, Oslo, Zürich, Amsterdam, Wiesbaden, Vienna, Düsseldorf, Hague and St. Petersburg. In America in January 1913, she sang as soloist with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.
Metzger sang a huge variety of music and was called a great “singing actress”. She was considered a great Wagnerian and the best Erda in Das Rheingold that anyone had ever heard.
She was also a distinguished recitalist; at one point her accompanists were none other than Richard Strauss and Hans Pfitzner.
In 1933 she gave concerts under Otto Klemperer and Bruno Walter. After Hitler came to power she performed only for Jewish audiences.
In 1939 Metzger and her daughter fled to Brussels but were rounded up and sent to Auschwitz, where they perished.
Ottilie Metzger (15 July 1878 — murdered in Auschwitz in February 1943).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Baritone Richard Breitenfeld made his debut in 1897 at the Opera House of Cologne as Count di Luna in ‘’Trovatore’’. He remained in Cologne until 1902 when he joined the Opera House of Frankfurt a. M., where he worked approximately 30 years.
He made guest appearances at the opera houses of Germany and with the Wagner-Verein in Amsterdam. He performed in the 1905 Dutch première of Wagner’s ‘’Parsifal’’ as Amfortas.
He was greatly loved by the public and by fellow musicians and singers.
Hear him sing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9Xp9KQE4IQ
Richard Breitenfeld
Richard Breitenfeld (13 October 1869 — murdered in the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1944, at age seventy-five.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Basso profondo Hans Tobias Erl was one of the best known singers of the Frankfurt ensemble, with a large repertoire.
He began his actual career in the theatre during the 1908–1909 season at the Raimund-Theater in Vienna, after already having sung in the world premiere performance of Oscar Straus’ operetta Die lustigen Nibelungen at the Wiener Carl-Theater in 1904.
His repertoire included the major bass roles, such as Padre Guardiano in Verdi’s La forza del destino, Il Commendatore in Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Sarastro in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, and the Landgrave in Tannhäuser, Pogner in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Hunding in Die Walküre, Gurnemanz in Parsifal by Wagner bass.
He sang the role of the King in the world premiere performance of Franz Schreker’s Der Schatzgräber (21 January 1920).
We have found a photo that may be the only existing image of Mr. Hans Tobias Erl:
Sadly, we have not found a single recording of this greatly loved singer.
Erl was fired from the Frankfurt Opera in 1933 because he was a Jew.
On the night of 8–9 November 1938, during the November Pogroms hundreds of Frankfurt’s Jewish citizens were driven across the city to the Festhalle Frankfurt arena.
When the Jewish members of the Opera were rounded up on November 9th and taken to the Festhalle Frankfurt, Hans Tobias Erl was taken there also.
He was forced to sing “In Diesen Heilgen Hallen” from the Magic Flute for the Jews about to be deported.
It’s hard to imagine. It blows the mind.
Hans Erl, Born 1882 — Deported to Auschwitz and murdered there in 1942
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tenor Hermann Schramm, born in 1871, was a German tenor who sang at the Frankfurt Opera in the 1920s and made several recordings for HMV Germany.
He was also forced to leave along with his Jewish colleagues, but he survived, thanks to director Hans Meissner, who was able to persuade the mayor of Frankfurt to defend Schramm, on the grounds that he had an “Aryan” wife and that his children had been raised as Christians, he escaped the deportation and murder of his colleagues at the Frankfurt Opera,Richard Breitenfeld, Magda Spiegel, bass Hans Erl and violinist Moses Slager.
Hans Meissner intervened personally for Schramm with the mayor in 1933 when Erl and others had to be dismissed from the opera.
Listen to him sing in this rare example of Meistersinger from 1923… from days long past, when Wagner was still sung with beautiful light words and legato…
https://youtu.be/uLPMUH9SoPw
Schramm had been witness to the arrest of a Jewish woman caught with a tramway ticket in her handbag — evidence of her using public transport.
Schramm attempted to intervene and was repeatedly struck in the face by Frankfurt Gestapo officer Heinrich Baab, who was scouring the streets of Frankfurt after 1940 looking for Jews. Schramm was not arrested.
Hermann Schramm lived to testify in the 1950 trial against Baab.
He died in 1951.
A few more Singers.
Grete Forst
The wonderful Austrian soprano Grete Forst was born Margarete Feiglstock to a Jewish family in Vienna.
Forst made her operatic debut in 1900 at the Cologne Opera, in the title role of Lucia di Lammermoor. She was on Gustave Mahler’s roster of great singers at the Vienna Opera, where she sang coloratura and lyric soprano roles.
Forst was very admired by Puccini for her performance as Madama Butterfly. She converted to Catholicism in 1940 but was arrested in 1942.
Hear her sing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NatOAiUiLtE
Here is Grete Forst in a beautifully musical interpretation of the duet “Doux aveu! Ce tendre langage”, from Guillaume Tell, with the great tenor Leo Slezak:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEkmnLim9Yw
Grete Forst, born August 18, 1878 in Vienna, murdered in Maly Trostinets extermination camp June 1, 1942.
~ ~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~
Henriette Gottlieb (Berlin, 1884 — Łódź Ghetto, 2 January 1942) was born in Berlin. She made her debut in Plauen in 1909 and entered the Berlin Municipal Opera in 1913, remaining there until 1934.
Gottlieb was a particularly noted Wagnerian interpreter, and sang at the Bayreuth Festivals (1927–30). She was also a guest in Amsterdam in 1928.
As a Jew she was forbidden to appear in Germany after 1934, although she continued to live in Berlin. She had one of her greatest successes in 1930 at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, singing Brünnhilde in the Ring cycle.
Following the Nazi Berufsverbot, Henriette Gottlieb lived in Berlin until she was deported to Poland in 1941. She died in the Łódź Ghetto on 2 January 1942.
Here she sings in La Juive, with Heinz Arensen & Paul Hansen c. 1913
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhDyzTDrtrk
UNDERSTATEMENT.
The monstrous circumstances of the demise of these great artists defy human imagination.
It seems that almost all who have written about Ottilie Metzger have been overwhelmed by the unthinkable cause of her death. It is an unspeakable irony that a woman who was considered one of the best Wagnerian singers ever, and that a man such as Richard Breitenfeld, also considered a great Wagnerian, were condemned to such a horrendous end, murdered by the Wagner-loving Nazis.
And Erl, and Spiegel, and Forst and Gottlieb, and…
“Alles, was ist, endet… Ein düstrer Tag dämmert den Göttern…”
(“All that is shall come to an end… a dark day dawns for the Gods”)
Erda — Das Rheingold
~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Tenor Theodore Ritch ( Odessa 1894–1943) was a Russian tenor.
Theodore Ritch
At the beginning of his career he also appeared under the name of Theodore Reich.
He made his debut in Russia in 1917.
In 1932 he sang at Roma Opera the part of Vladimir in ‘’Prince Igor’’. He retired in Paris, where he appears to have evaded the rafle du Vél’ d’hiv in July 1942, but was arrested in 1943 and sent to Drancy. He died on a train headed for a concentration camp, presumably Auschwitz, in Poland.
In 1921 he went to Chicago and sang there from 1926–27 and 1929–32, with great success. He sang many operas, including the part of Leopold in La Juive with Rosa Raisa, Charles Marshall, and Alexander Kipnis
In 1924 he performed in Monte Carlo in the world premiere of Chabrier’s Une Éducation Manquée. With Mary Kousnetzoff he founded a Russian Opera group and toured through Europe.
In 1927 he was a member of the Russian Opera in Paris created by Maria Kusnetsova. In 1928 he appeared at Grand Opera as Damitri in ‘’Boris Godunov’’.
In 1929 he appeared with the Russian Opera in Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, and then went to London to perform at Lyceum Theater in ‘’Sadko’’.
In Chicago in 1929–30 he sang Leopold in ‘’La Juive’’ with Rosa Raisa, Charles Marshall, and Alexander Kipnis.
He also sang the King of the Fools in ‘’Louise’’ with Mary Garden, Rene Maison, Maria Claessens, and Vanni Marcoux.
The following season (1930–31) he sang Ramon in ‘’La Navarraise’’, Gaston in ‘’Camille’’ by Hamilton Forrest with Garden and Charles Hackett, and also Cassio in ‘’Otello’’ with Marshall, Claudia Muzio, and Vanni-Marcoux.
In 1931 he appeared at the Lyceum in the English premiere of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sadko.
In 1932 he performed in Rome in the premiere night of Borodin’s Prince Igor.
and in 1937 he was in Ariane et Barbe-bleue’ at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden at Covent Garden.
He was living in France and teaching singing when he was arrested by the Nazis in 1943 and taken by the German occupying forces.
He died on the train en route to Auschwitz.
The voice of this tragic artist is only known through a few Columbia recordings from about 1928.
What aria could best describe a condemned man’s love for life more than this?
Hear Theodore Ritch’s heartfelt rendition of “E lucevan le Stelle” here (it is mislabled on youtube, unfortunately):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uub4uLMUy8
