Elisabeth Rethberg
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The German soprano Elisabeth Rethberg (22 September 1894 – 6 June 1976) was a famous opera singer active from the early 1920s to the mid 1940s. She was greatly admired for her pure tone and fine musical intelligence. Rethberg was best known for her performances of the Mozart and Verdi heroines.
Rethberg was born in Schwarzenberg. She studied at the Dresden Conservatory, making her operatic debut in Zigeunerbaron by Johann Strauss. Rethberg sang with the Dresden Opera from 1915 to 1922. In 1922, she made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Aida. She moved to the US and remained with the Metropolitan for twenty seasons, singing some thirty roles, but she also performed frequently at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Salzburg Festival, and the principal Italian houses. Rethberg regularly returned to Dresden where in 1928 she created the title role in Strauss's Die ägyptische Helena.
Rethberg did not have a big voice but deployed what she had with intelligence and fine phrasing. In the 1930s, however, she started taking on heavier roles, such as Aida, and Rachel in La Juive, later even adding the Wagnerian roles of Elsa, Eva, Sieglinde, and Elisabeth to her repertoire, which damaged her voice and hastened her early retirement from the stage in 1942.
Rethberg made numerous recordings between 1921 and 1940, many of which are still in print.
Rethberg died in Yorktown Heights, New York in 1976 at age 89.
