Maria Ivogun

Note by John Steane











'An Ariel of the operatic world'. The phrase is A. P. Hatton's who wrote under the pen-name of Figaro in Musical Opinion, and it is the best I can think of to characterise Maria Ivogün. She appeared at Covent Garden first in 1924, when she gave what became legendary performances as Zerbinetta in She was born in Budapest and very nearly survived for her centenary on November 18th, 1991: at her death in October 1987 she was aged 96. Her baptismal name was Maria Günter, and when she took the name of Ivogün for her professional career it was arrived at from a compression of her mother's Ida von Günter. She was brought up in Zürich and went to the Vienna Academy from which she emerged on a memorable day in 1913 to audition for the State Opera. The story is well-known. She was rejected almost out of hand by the Director, but eagerly taken on by Bruno Walter, who was also present at the audition and was able to offer her immediately a place in his newly-reformed company at Munich. There she worked her apprenticeship, taking secondary parts in a wide range of operas including the world premiere of Pfitzner's Palestrina in 1917, in which she played the composer's son Ighino. Walter also allowed her to shine, which she did, first as Mimì, then as a substitute Queen of the Night. Hers was a delicate voice, never to be pressed into dramatic roles, often best in comedy (as when she sang Norina in Don Pasquale and Nannetta in Falstaff ), but also with a distinctive timbre from which a note of sadness was never far distant.

When Bruno Walter left Munich for Berlin, Ivogün became one of the leading singers in an ensemble that was often considered second to none. In the remaining years up to the Nazi era, she sang her Mimì, Konstanze, Susanna, Manon and eventually Tatiana to audiences who counted it among their greatest privileges that this lovely singer was in the resident company. Alfred Frankenstein, a fervent admirer of hers and a great connoisseur of the opera, wrote of the Berlin Lustigen Weiber von Windsor: 'If all the others were poor, we went again and again to the performances because of Ivogün and Walter.'

Abroad she enjoyed less consistent success, but at best was received as one of the great singers of the century. This was so in Chicago, where she appeared in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, transferring then to New York and earning praise for having 'the command of every feat of the coloratura soprano.' It may have been the fact that this, rather than a German role, was the one in which she made her mark that eventually prevented her from developing a career in the USA comparable to that of Amelita Galli-Curci. Rosina was one of Galli-Curci's favourite parts also, and as she had gone from Chicago to New York's Metropolitan Opera in 1921 she was not overjoyed at the prospect of Ivogün arriving to compete in some of her best roles; and so, it was said, she applied the prima donna's veto. As it happens she may not have needed to worry, for Ivogün's decline coincided very largely with her own. With Galli-Curci the principal cause was physical, the growth of a goitre which affected pitch and was left too long for surgery not to have a disastrous effect on her singing; with Ivogün it appears to have been psychological. She had a profoundly unhappy time in which she blamed herself for the death of a close relative who drowned at sea having been encouraged by Ivogün to make the voyage. She also had trouble with her eyesight, and spent a year in a dark-room. Her first marriage, with the tenor Karl Erb, broke up under circumstances into which there was a general agreement not to pry, and by the mid-1930s she had virtually retired.

She then became newly celebrated as a teacher. She married the pianist Michael Raucheisen, and this alliance helped many young singers to work at technique and interpretation under the same roof. It was to Ivogün that the baritone Karl Schmitt-Walter recommended Elisabeth Schwarzkopf to apply for direction when she was working uncertainly in the coloratura-soprano area having not long recovered from a period during which she was being trained as a contralto. Ivogün devoted herself to this star pupil and, like Elvira de Hidalgo, teacher of Maria Callas, is now often remembered not so much in her own right as for having been the teacher of another famous soprano. But Ivogün was herself utterly special, and gramophone records are happily at hand to support written accounts of her charm and accomplishment.

Record collectors who already have her Ariadne auf Naxos recording (NI 7812) or her arias from Die Zauberflöte (NI 7822) and Die Entführung aus dem Serail (NI 7818) will need no persuading that here is one of the great sopranos. In this present collection she can be followed throughout most of her best years as a singer. The upward range may perhaps be the most striking feature at first, but more notable are the fluency and evenness of its usage, more remarkable still the solidity of voice in the middle and lower register. Her technical facility is continually astonishing whether in the scales of La traviata, the cadenzas of Les Huguenots or the altissimi of the Handel aria and the strength of character she could bring to her roles is well exemplified in Frau Fluth's solo in Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor. The later stages of her art are well represented for delicacy in the folk songs and for panache in the Czardas from Die Fledermaus. Above all, as Jörgen Kesting has remarked in his monumental work Die grossen Sänger (Düsseldorf 1986), she is the great singer of the waltz: for pure joy in singing - having all the natural gifts and the technical expertise at command - it would indeed be hard to find a more scintillating example than Maria Ivogün's recording of Kreisler's 'Liebesfreud.'


© 1992 John Steane

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