Margarete Wallmann or Wallman (aka Margarethe Wallmann, Margherita Wallman or Margarita Wallmann) (22 June or July 1901 or 1904 – 2 May 1992)[1] was a ballerina, choreographer, stage designer, and opera director.
The date and place of Wallmann's birth are uncertain, and nothing is known about her family. The memoir Les balcons du ciel, published in 1976 under the name Margarita Wallmann, is of no help since it deals mainly with her career after 1933.
Born most probably in Berlin Wallmann received classical dancing education from Eugenia Eduardowa (1882–1960) in Berlin and later from Heinrich Kröller (1880–1930) and Anna Ornelli in Munich. From 1923 on she attended Mary Wigmans ballet school in Dresden and for a time belonged to Wigman's touring company, whose members included such future dance stars as Hanya Holm and Gret Palucca. In 1928 she traveled to New York and held lectures there on Wigman's Ausdruckstanz. In 1929 she became head of the Wigman School in Berlin.
In 1930 she founded her own company Tänzer-Kollektiv which in 1931 had already grown to 37 members. Their first production was the "movement drama" Orpheus Dionysos by Felix Emmel with Wallmann as Euridike and Ted Shawn as Orpheus. Shawn invited Wallmann to teach at his Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts in Los Angeles. In 1931 the company staged Emmel's Das jüngste Gericht (The Last Judgement) for the Salzburg Festival and performed there again the following year. Due to an accident however Wallmann herself had to quit dancing.
In 1933 she moved to Vienna and in 1934 became ballet master at the Vienna State Opera and head of its ballet school. In 1938, after Austria's Anschluss to Nazi Germany, due to her "non aryan" descent she was laid off as was her soon to be divorced husband Hugo Burghauser. While Burghauser on 12 September 1938 fled via Hungary, Yugoslavia and Italy to Canada and finally to the United States,[2] Wallmann found employment as ballet director at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires and became a leading figure of dance in Argentine.
In 1949 she returned to Europe and became ballet director of La Scala in Milano. One of the new ballets she created there was Vita dell'uomo by Alberto Savinio (1958). Since 1952, she devoted herself mainly to directing operas. Wallmann became the natural choice to direct premiere performances, from Darius Milhaud's David to La Scala's now-famed 1958 rendition of Turandot with Birgit Nilsson. Also at the Scala, she directed Maria Callas in Médée (conducted by Leonard Bernstein, 1953), Alceste (conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini, 1954), Norma (1955, the last few seconds of which were filmed), and Un ballo in maschera (1957).
In 1957 Wallmann returned to the Vienna State Opera to stage Tosca (conducted by Herbert von Karajan, and starring Renata Tebaldi), followed in later years by new productions of Dialogues des Carmelites (1959; conducted by Heinrich Hollreiser; starring Irmgard Seefried, Ivo Žídek, Elisabeth Höngen, Hilde Zadek, Christel Goltz, Rosette Anday, Anneliese Rothenberger), Assassinio nella cattedrale (1960, reviving Wallmann's 1958 La Scala production; conducted by Herbert von Karajan, starring Hans Hotter, Kurt Equiluz, Anton Dermota, Gerhard Stolze, Paul Schöffler, Walter Berry, Hilde Zadek, Christa Ludwig), La forza del destino (1960; conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos; starring Antonietta Stella, Giuseppe di Stefano, Ettore Bastianini, Giulietta Simionato), Turandot (1961; conducted by Francesco Molinari-Pradelli, starring Birgit Nilsson, Giuseppe di Stefano, Leontyne Price), and Don Carlo (1962; conducted by Oliviero de Fabritiis, starring Flaviano Labò, Boris Christoff, Hans Hotter, Sena Jurinac, Eberhard Wächter, Giulietta Simionato).[3]
For the Deutsche Oper Berlin she directed Turandot (1965), and La forza del destino (1970).
Her last production was Der Rosenkavalier for the Monte Carlo Opera (1987).
She died in Monte Carlo.
Contents |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||