Christa Ludwig Reveals A Lifetime Of Learning In Candid Interview

An early portrait of the mezzo-soprano.

The Berliner-Morgenpost sits down with mezzo-soprano Christa Ludwig to discuss a wide range of topics at her home in Klosterneuburg. In the interview she reveals her feelings about disliking the word "Masterclass"; Maria Callas and Anja Silja possessing voices non-beautiful voices; singers today knowing about sex, but not eroticism; why she wasn't hired more in Berlin by Fricsay; how Birgit Nilsson had vocal cords that could withstand anything; recording Fidelio over 14 days; doing a recital with steroid-induced pianist Tzimon Barto; and how she thinks her life today is quite boring. Read the whole interview here.

Fred Plotkin Examines Christa Ludwig's Golden Career For WQXR

(Photo: Ernst Kainerstorfer/ORF)

"Ludwig was born in Berlin on March 10, 1928 and grew up in Aachen. Her parents were singers and her mother was her first teacher. Her father became a stage director and manager. She grew up in the milieu of music and theater and absorbed it all. When Ludwig was seven, she heard her mother sing in Elektra and Fidelio conducted by a young Herbert von Karajan. Germany soon fell under Nazism and then came the horrors of World War II. When she was 16, her family home was destroyed by bombs. After her nation lost the war, Ludwig sang for American GIs in exchange for cigarettes, which were valuable as currency when money was worthless. Christa Ludwig was able to understand the awfulness of war and allow her emotional development to deepen without being derailed from her goals. She kept learning music, reading literature, thinking about characters. When German opera houses reopened in 1946, they needed good singers and few were in supply. Ludwig, at 18, was talented, attractive, tall and well-prepared. She was in the right place at the right time. She sang Orlovsky in Die Fledermaus in Frankfurt and was on her way, ultimately to Vienna, where she became a beloved star." [Source]

Fun Insider Secret Onstage At The Metropolitan Opera

(Photo: Jonathan Tichler/MET Opera)

"Another small insider homage could be found on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera this month, in its lavish production of Der Rosenkavalier, by Richard Strauss. In the third act, after the boorish Baron Ochs’s attempted assignation at a tavern goes disastrously and hilariously wrong, he is besieged with bills from the innkeeper and a host of others. Invisible to the audience — whether sitting in the back of the Family Circle or the front of the orchestra — is what the long paper bills thrust at him actually say. In flowing cursive writing, the bills list the cast from the current production’s 1969 premiere, starting with the conductor, Karl Böhm, and naming everyone from Leonie Rysanek, who sang the Marschallin, to Christa Ludwig, who sang Octavian, to Charles Anthony, who was the innkeeper that night (and who sang some 2,928 mostly small roles at the Met during his long career). The tradition of these kinds of in jokes goes back centuries. Mozart’s Don Giovanni has an allusion in the last act to his own Le Nozze di Figaro." [Source]

Happy Birthday: Christa Ludwig

"Mainacht" (Brahms)
Leonard Bernstein, piano

The mezzo-soprano was born March 16, 1928, in Berlin, Germany. Her father, Anton Ludwig, was a tenor and opera director. Her mother, Eugenie Besall-Ludwig, was her first voice teacher and a mezzo-soprano at the Aachen Opera House when Herbert von Karajan led the orchestra from 1934 to 1941. Ludwig made her debut in 1946 at the age of 18 as Orlovsky in Die Fledermaus at Frankfurt, where she sang until 1952. She was a member of the Darmstadt Opera from 1952 to 1954, then sang the 1954–1955 season at the Staatsoper Hannover. She joined the Vienna State Opera in 1955, where she became one of its principal artists and was appointed Kammersängerin in 1962 and performed with the company for more than thirty years. In 1954, Ludwig made her debut at the Salzburg Festival as Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro, and appeared there regularly until 1981. Ludwig made her

"Starke Scheite schichtet mir dort"
Götterdämmerung (Wagner)

debut as Brangäne in Tristan und Isolde at the Bayreuth Festival in 1966. In 1960, she performed as Adalgisa alongside Maria Callas as Norma, in Bellini's opera by the same title. Ludwig made her American debut at the Lyric Opera of Chicago as Dorabella in Così fan tutte in 1959. That same year, she made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in as Cherubino, and subsequently sang 121 performances until 1993, including the Met premiere of Die Frau ohne Schatten. Ludwig first appeared at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 1969 as Amneris in Aida.