● Lisa Della Casa (2 February 1919 – 10
December 2012[1])
was a Swiss soprano most admired for her
interpretations of major heroines in major operas by Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart and Richard Strauss, of
German lieder, and for her great beauty. She was dubbed “the most beautiful
woman on the operatic stage”.[2]
●
Biography
Lisa Della Casa was born in Burgdorf,
Switzerland to an Italian-Swiss father, Francesco Della Casa, and a
Bavarian-born mother, Margarete Mueller. She began studying singing at the age
of 15 at the Zurich Conservatory, and made her operatic debut in the title role
of Puccini's Madama Butterfly at
Solothurn-Biel Municipal Theater in 1940. She joined the ensemble of Zurich
Municipal Opera House in 1943 (staying there until 1950) and sang various parts,
from the Queen of the Night in Mozart's The
Magic Flute to Dorabella in Così fan tutte.
Later she sang Fiordiligi. An earlier marriage having ended in divorce, in 1949,
she married Yugoslavian-born journalist and violinist Dragan
Debeljevic, with whom she had a daughter, Vesna.[3]
Della Casa sang the part of Zdenka in the performance of Richard Strauss's Arabella at
Zurich Municipal Opera House to her revered soprano Maria Cebotari's Arabella
in 1946. Cebotari recognized her talent and introduced her at the Salzburg Festival in
1947, where she sang Zdenka again in a production starring Maria Reining and Hans
Hotter. After the premiere performance, Strauss himself commented, "The
little Della Casa will one day be Arabella!" ("Die Kleine Della Casa wird eines
Tages Arabella sein!").[4]
That same year on 18 October, she made her debut at the Vienna State Opera
House, singing the part of Nedda in Leoncavallo's Pagliacci.
Soon she moved to Vienna and joined the ensemble of the Vienna State Opera
House. In 1949, she made her debut at La Scala in Milan as Sophie in
Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier
and Marzelline in Beethoven's Fidelio. Victor de Sabata, the
musical director of La Scala at that time, tried to persuade her to move to La
Scala, but she chose to remain in Vienna.
She made her British debut singing the part of Countess Almaviva in Mozart's
The Marriage of
Figaro at the Glyndebourne
Festival. It was at this festival, during a crisis involving Fritz
Busch, that someone asked what her husband, who always accompanied her, did
in life, and she replied matter-of-factly: "He loves me." ("Er liebt mich.") She
went on to sing the title role in Arabella for the first time, at the Bavarian State
Opera House in Munich in 1951. It became her signature role. She sang Eva in
Wagner's Die
Meistersinger von Nürnberg at the Bayreuth Festival in
1952, but would never sing at Bayreuth again, preferring the Salzburg Summer
Festival.[3]
In 1953, Della Casa sang the part of Arabella in the Bavarian State Opera
Company's performances at Covent Garden, and
sang the part of Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier for the first time, at the
Salzburg Festival. on 20 November 1953, she made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera
House in New York (the Met) as the Countess Almaviva in The Marriage of
Figaro. Since her debut, she sang a total of 173 complete opera performances
at the Met until her last performance there on 9 December 1967 as Countess
Almaviva. Her repertoire at the Met was as follows:
- The Marriage of Figaro: Countess Almaviva (47 performances)
- Don Giovanni: Donna Elvira (34 performances)
- Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg: Eva (23 performances)
- Der Rosenkavalier: Die Feldmarschallin (17 performances) and Octavian
(8 performances)
- Der Zigeunerbaron: Saffi (17 performances)
- Arabella: Arabella (16 performances)
- Ariadne auf Naxos: Ariadne (4 performances)
- Lohengrin: Elsa (4 performances)
- Madama Butterfly: Cio-Cio-San (2 performances)
- La bohème: Mimì (1 performance)
In 1955, she sang the part of the Marschallin in Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier
for the first time; this was in a series of performances to celebrate the
opening of the restored Vienna State Opera House. As a result, she had sung all
three parts - the Marschallin, Octavian, Sophie - in Der Rosenkavalier as
well as a single performance as Annina replacing an indisposed singer in Zurich.
The Salzburg Festival was one of the most important venues in her career. She
sang Ariadne in Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos
and Donna Elvira in Mozart's Don Giovanni in 1954,
(once again) Donna Elvira in 1956, Chrysothemis in Strauss's Elektra and Countess
Almaviva in 1957 (she also gave a recital at the Festival in the same year which
has been preserved as a recording) and Arabella in 1958. Colleague Inge Borkh
stated emphatically: "She was THE Arabella!" ("Sie war DIE Arabella!)"[3]
Della Casa sang Pamina in The Magic Flute in
1959. on 26 July 1960, the newly-built Salzburg Festspielhaus opened with a
performance of Der Rosenkavalier under Herbert von Karajan.
She sang the part of the Marschallin in this performance with Sena
Jurinac as Octavian and Hilde Gueden as Sophie.
Originally, Karajan and film director Paul Czinner planned to
make a film of the performance; they asked Della Casa to sing the part of the
Marschallin in the film too and she gladly accepted. But due to Walter
Legge, well-known recording producer of EMI and husband of Dame Elisabeth
Schwarzkopf, Della Casa was replaced by Schwarzkopf for the film. Shocked
with being betrayed by this last-minute decision, although she sang the
scheduled performances of the season (the Marschallin and Countess Almaviva in
The Marriage of
Figaro, Della Casa decided never to sing there again. When asked several
times subsequently to do so, she declined, replying: "No, sir, for me, Salzburg
is dead." (“No, sir, Salzburg für mich ist gestorben.")[3]
She surprised her audiences by singing the title role in Salome at the
Bavarian State Opera House in Munich in 1961. Colleague Inge Borkh said that Della
Casa was "very sexy ... because she did not seek to be so!" ("Sie war sehr
sexy... unbewusst!")[5]
From this time onward, she took few dramatic parts in Italian operas, succeeding
notably as Desdemona in Verdi's Otello and the title role in
Puccini's Tosca, but finally returned to
lyric parts in Mozart and Richard Strauss operas. In 1964, when Elisabeth
Schwarzkopf (now both her colleague and rival at the Vienna State Opera House)
made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera of New York as the Marschallin in
Der Rosenkavalier, Della Casa sang Octavian . Anneliese
Rothenberger and Rolf Gerard attested that, contrary to Bing's and the
public's desire for scandal, no hard feelings between the two sopranos were
apparent during this period. Gerard who was working at the time with famous Met
director Rudolf Bing called the
latter a "publicity genius".[6]
Other significant roles were Cleopatra in Handel's [Julius Caesar],
the Countess in Strauss's Capriccio, Ilia in Mozart's Idomeneo,
and the female roles in Gottfried von
Einem's Der Prozess.
● Health
crises
In the mid-1960s, her taste for the operatic stage began to decline and she
gave fewer performances. As film excerpts show, her singing was still
functioning at its best. However, in 1970, her daughter Vesna, then 20 years
old, suffered an aneurysm. She kept to her engagements, notably in Handel's Agrippina
in Zürich. Vesna had to be operated on immediately. She survived the operation,
but there were complications. She begged her mother to continue singing, as it
made her feel healthier, but Della Casa devoted more and more time to her
daughter’s recovery, even buying a house in Spain where the family could gather
undisturbed most of the year, and gave fewer and fewer performances until her
final performance at the Wiener Staatsoper, as Arabella on 25 October 1973. And
in 1974, she surprised the opera world by announcing her sudden retirement, aged
55. She was then considered to be at the height of her career and left her fans
bewildered: "no explanations, no comeback, no masterclasses, no interviews, no
private appearances". Vesna spoke movingly of her mother's "unceasing, limitless
love" ("eine Liebe ohne Ende").[7]
Many years later she herself suffered a kind of stroke, but recovered after four
years.[citation
needed]
● Later
career
Lisa Della Casa admitted she did not like the "music business", with its
intrigues and vanities. Dietrich
Fischer-Dieskau said of her that after hearing a performance he was
astonished and wanted to congratulate her, but she was still so involved in her
role that she never heard his compliments. She also smoked during her career,
with defiance: "Why not?" ("Warum nicht?") In a 1963 BBC television interview
conducted in English, when the soprano was in mid-career, she was asked if
smoking were not bad for her health. Smilingly she replied: "You know, while
in Vienna, I went to a special singers' doctor [who told me] 'it is the singing
which is more dangerous than the smoking', and I smoke longer than I
sing."[3]
She made several complete opera recordings mainly for the Decca label: her
interpretations of Countess Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro (Erich
Kleiber) and the title role in Arabella (by Sir Georg
Solti) are regarded as among the finest recorded. She made the first
commercial recording of Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs (Karl
Böhm) in 1953 for Decca, and many classical music lovers claim this
recording to be the greatest available. Her Elvira, sung to perhaps the greatest
Don Giovanni of his time, Cesare Siepi, is available
both on CD and DVD.[8]
She recorded a memorable Countess under the direction of Erich Leinsdorf at the
Met, starring the American bass-baritone Giorgio Tozzi in the title
role.
As an interpreter of lieder, she often performed with
the German pianist Sebastian Peschko and
Hungarian Arpad Sandor. She made several appearances in the acclaimed US
television edition of the Bell Telephone
Hour and appeared regularly on Swiss television, giving interviews and
performances, as well as participating in game shows. In October 2007 and
November 2008, Della Casa, members of her family and her colleagues agreed to be
interviewed as part of a Liebe einer Diva, (Loves of a Diva), a German
documentary film by Thomas Voigt and Wolfgang Wunderlich about the soprano's
life and career.[1] The film was last shown on 5 April 2010 on German
television channel 3SAT and has ample footage of Della
Casa's career, as well as rare television footage.[3]
She died on 10 December 2012 in Münsterlingen, Switzerland.[9]
The city of Salzburg flew a black flag on news of her death.[10]
● Decorations and awards
- This article incorporates information from the equivalent
article on the German
Wikipedia.
●
References
- ^
December 11, 2012. "Sad news: The most serene soprano that ever lived is no more".
Artsjournal.com. Retrieved
2012-12-11.
- ^
Bibliography: "Lisa Della Casa: Liebe einer Diva,
Porträt der Sopranistin"; German documentary film by Thomas Voigt and Wolfgang
Wunderlich, BBC Motion Gallery, Sony BMG Music (Germany) GmbH, Wunderlich Medien
GbR, United GmbH & Co. KG, Privatarchiv Lisa Della Casa, 2008
- ^ a
b
c
d
e
f
Lisa Della Casa: Liebe einer Diva, Porträt der
Sopranistin, German documentary film, 2008.
- ^
Debeljevic, Dragan. Ein Leben mit LISA DELLA CASA
oder, "In dem Schatten ihrer Locken", Atlantis Musikbuch-Verlag Zürich,
1975; ISBN
3-7611-0474-X, pg. 30
- ^
Interview with Inge Borkh in Lisa Della Casa:
Liebe einer Diva, Porträt der Sopranistin”, German documentary film,
2008.
- ^
Interview of Lisa Della Casa with Heinz
Fischer-Karwin, ORF TV, 1967.
- ^
Interviews with both husband Dragan Debeljevic and
daughter Vesna Debeljevic in Lisa Della Casa: Liebe einer Diva, Porträt der
Sopranistin, German documentary film, 2008.
- ^
Mozart - Don Giovanni, Furtwängler, with Siepi,
Grümmer, Dermota, Edelmann, Berry, Berger, DGG, 1954.
- ^
"Staatsoper - Lisa della Casa verstorben" (in (German)). Wiener-staatsoper.at. Retrieved 2012-12-11.
■ Rihard Strauss -
리하르트 슈트라우스(1864~1949) ■
● 가곡 「4개의 마지막 노래 -
Vier Letzte Lieder」
R.슈트라우스는 그의 생애를 통해 3개의 분야, 오페라, 교향시, 가곡에서 명작을 많이 남겼다. 독일의
예술가곡은 두개의 유파로 나뉘는데 슈트라우스는 슈베르트, 슈만, 볼프의 유파를 계승한 작곡가로 제1, 제2, 제3의 시기에 집중적인
가곡(Lieder)작곡이 이루어졌다. 제 1기는그가 19~25세, 초기시기로 보편성을 띤 작품성으로 <<위령의 날, 세레나데,
그대야말로 마음의 왕관>> 감미로운 선율미와 로맨틱한 면이 특징,
제2기는 그가 교향시 창작에서 오페라로 옮겨가는 19세기 말에 해당되는 시기 뤼케르트와 데멜(Dehmel)의 시로 쓰여진 명작,
제3기는 1918년이후 작품으로 C.브레타노의 6개의 가곡과 같이 시의 깊이와 작곡 기법의 원숙미에 있어서 최고의 걸작이라할 수 있다.
<<3개의 마지막 노래>>에 <<저녁노을>>을 첨가시킨 [4개의 마지막 노래]는 리하르트 슈트라우스
만년의 아름다운 명작으로 평가받고있다.
R.슈트라우스 가곡은 1500여곡이 출판된 바있지만, 20여곡이 불려지는 상황으로 특히 R.슈트라우스 가곡은 감미로운 선율미가 특징적
요소지만 시와 음악 사이의 기교적인(Virtuoso)작법(피아노반주-자유로운 화성)은 그만의 비교적인 가곡작법으로 평가된다. R.슈트라우스
<<3개의 마지막 노래>>는 독일 예술가곡의 최후적인 아름다운 명곡으로, 그야말로 예술가곡(Lieder)으로서 최고의
명작으로 기록된다.
3개의 마지막 노래는 모두 헤르만 헤세의 시를 가사로하고있는데 <<봄, 9월, 잠자리들
때>>의 세곡에 <<Im Abendrot 저녁 노을(아헨도르프 시에 의한)>>을 첨가해서 <<4개의
마지막 노래>>가 된다. 특이한 것은 이 <<4개의 마지막 노래>>는 관현악 & 독창을 위한 작품이라는
사실.
● 제1곡 <봄 Spring> 알레그로
Eb장조 6/8박자, 슈트라우스적인 조바꿈, 무조적인 전주로 시작된다. 가사는 3절, ((희미한 무덤속에서 난 오랫동안 꿈을
보았다))
● 제2곡(9월 September>안단테, D장조 4/4박자,
<<Spring - 봄>>보다는 선적으로 복잡한 관현악법..((뜰이 슬퍼하고 있다. 비가 차갑게 꽃속에
스며든다...))
● 제3곡<잠자리에 들때 Beim Schlafengenhen) 안단테,
4/8박자, f단조로 시작 후반은 Db장조로.. 현악기로 낮은 성부에서 끓어오르는 듯한 전주.. 노래는 어둡게 들어온다..((지금에서야 한 낮은
나를 피로하게 한다))
● 제4곡 저녁 노을(Im Abendrot) 안단테, Eb장조 4/4박자
아헨도르프의 시에의한 곡으로 <<4개의 마지막 노래>> 중 가장 먼저 작곡.((우리들은 슬픔도 기쁨도 손에손을 잡고 지나쳐
걸어왔다. 이젠 방황하지 말고 높고 조용한 곳에서 쉬자... 오 넓고 조용한 평화, 저녁 노을에 우리들은 지쳐있다. 그것은 어쩜 죽음일지도
모른다는.. ))
