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Although Belgian by birth and training, mezzo soprano Rita Gorr was regarded as a lingering example of the great French tradition of lyric/dramatic singing. Her large, powerful instrument, narrowing in the top register to a point that was (usually) just short of shrillness, was remarkably even; no abrupt shifts into or out of the chest register intruded in her grand utterance. The larger the role's stature, the more apt her qualifications for it. While some found the voice's coloration too bright, in the theater its penetrative power was electrifying and Gorr's acting, commanding yet unexaggerated, always riveted the audience's attention. Several recordings, made in her prime, testify to an indomitable voice and presence. Beginning her studies in Ghent, Gorr later attended Brussels Conservatory. She made her stage debut in Antwerp in 1949, singing Fricka in Die Walküre. Thereafter, she was engaged at Strasbourg until 1952, when she won the Lausanne International Singing Competition and made debuts at both the Opéra and the Opéra-Comique, singing Magdalene in Meistersinger at the former and Charlotte at the latter. Later in that decade, she had received an invitation to Bayreuth, where she made her debut in 1958 as Fricka. Gorr's first appearance at Covent Garden took place in 1959, when she presented her imperious Amneris. La Scala heard her for the first time in 1960 when she undertook Kundry in a production of Parsifal.

Two important American debuts took place in 1962. At the Metropolitan Opera, her first appearance on October 17 was again as Amneris, beginning a too-short relationship that also brought to New York her Eboli, her Santuzza, her Azucena, and her Dalila. It was in the latter role that she made her spectacular debut in Chicago on November 10. In a production of Samson et Dalila originally intended for Giulietta Simionato and Jon Vickers (she advised she could not relearn the role in French; he had a protected illness), Gorr joined German Shakespearian actor-turned-heroic tenor Hans Kaart for a high-voltage performance of Saint-Saëns' Biblical pageant. While the promising tenor clearly had not fully learned his role, Gorr stormed the stage with dramatic authority and vocal splendor, creating further excitement in a season that had already held Régine Crespin's American debut. Gorr's career stretched over a half century. In the 1990s, she was still singing, smaller roles at major theaters and major ones at smaller theaters.

Gorr's reputation is sustained through her presence in several important recordings, ones that have held their place in the catalog over the decades. During her prime, she participated first in EMI's production of Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites together with such artists as Denise Duval and Régine Crespin, all under the composer's supervision (much later, she sang Madame de Croissy in another recording of the work). Her forthright Amneris was captured with the Aida of Leontyne Price in her prime and the complex, truly heroic Radames of Jon Vickers, all led by Georg Solti. Her Ortrud for RCA, under Erich Leinsdorf's direction, is matched in proficiency only by Sándor Kónya's Lohengrin, but is worth hearing. Finally, her imposing Dalila for EMI brought her together with Vickers once more for a recording regarded as essential despite indifferent conducting and secondary casting.

Elisabeth Grümmer was one of the favorite German sopranos of the middle two decades of the twentieth century.

She was born Elisabeth Schilz in Alsace-Lorraine. When the French regained the territory in 1918, her family moved to Meiningen. She studied drama at the university, and then started a successful career as a stage and film actress. Her stage training included training of her voice.

She moved to Aachen after marriage to Detlef Grümmer, the concertmaster of the orchestra there. She said that it was the sound of his violin, when he played cantabile, legato, that led her to understand the nature of singing. The music director at Aachen at that time was Herbert von Karajan, who cast her as one of the Flower Maidens in Wagner's Parsifal (Aachen, 1940). Soon she sang the leading role of Octavian in Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier, with her tall, slim figure making her especially convincing in this leading male role. (One critic rhapsodized that she "looked like a Botticelli Madonna in Gluck's Orpheus.")

In 1942 to 1944 she was engaged at that Duisberg Opera as the primary soprano for lyrical roles. During the war, her husband was killed in an air raid, in the basement of their home, holding his violin. She said he was her only love, and never remarried. After the end of the war, she joined the Städtische Oper of West Berlin (now the Deutsche Oper), which was her primary professional association throughout her career, remaining with that major company through 1972.

Her British debut was at Covent Garden in 1952, followed by an Edinburgh Festival in 1952, and she appeared at Bayreuth from 1957 to 1961. Her American debut was with the New York City Opera in Der Rosenkavalier (as the Marshallin) in 1967. She sang seven times with the Metropolitan Opera in that same year, as Elsa in Lohengrin. The first six of these were on tour; the seventh was her only appearance in the Metropolitan Opera House itself. By that time critics had been noticing some deterioration of her voice on and off for a few years, but, as she said at the time of the tour, "Granny can still do it."

She also appeared at Glyndebourne, the Hamburg Staatsoper, in East Berlin and Dresden, the Salzburg Festival, La Scala, Rome Opera, and Teatro Colón.

She excelled in the more noble and lyrical roles-the Marshallin, Octavian, the Countesses of Mozart (the Marriage of Figaro) and Strauss (Capriccio), Pamina, Euridice in Gluck's Orpheus, Ilia in Idomeneo, Eva in Meistersinger, and Elsa in Lohengrin, Desdemona in Verdi's Otello, and sang Ellen Orford in the first German production of Britten's Peter Grimes. By all accounts, her dramatic training served her well, helping to make her portrayals more convincing.

It has been suggested that the vocal decline of the 1960s was caused by an ill-advised turn to the dramatic soprano repertory. She sang Electra in Idomeneo in 1961 and 1962 at Salzburg, and Dona Anna in Don Giovanni shortly afterward.

As a recording artist, she made several notable discs, although the surplus of her voice type (Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Lisa della Casa, Irmgard Seefried, and Sena Jurinac were all close contemporaries) meant that she never recorded her leading Strauss roles in their entirety. She was a noted recitalist, but was surprisingly stiff in that style of singing on recordings.

Her farewell stage performance was at the Deutsche Opera in 1972 (as the Marshallin). She actively taught in Lucerne and Paris after her stage retirement.

Hans Hotter was one of the 20th century's greatest singing actors. Indeed, he was often compared to Russian bass-baritone Feodor Chaliapin in histrionic ability as well as vocal endowment. Like the Russian, he was tall, able to bring the authority of his six feet four inch frame to the Wagnerian roles in which he came to specialize. After the retirement of Friedrich Schorr in 1943, Hotter came to be considered the supreme Wotan in Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung tetrology.

Hotter trained as an organist and choirmaster, but found his vocal gifts pushing him in the direction of a singing career. He made his debut as the Speaker in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte at the age of 20 in the small theater at Opava. Following contracts in Prague, Breslau, and Hamburg, he was invited to Munich in 1938 and remained associated with that company for much of his subsequent career. In Munich, he came in close contact with composer Richard Strauss who, much impressed with Hotter's singing and acting, composed three roles specifically for him, beginning with the Commandant in Friedenstag (Freedom's Day), which had its premiere in Munich in 1938. Following that, Strauss wrote for Hotter the part of Jupiter in Die Liebe der Danae (The Love of Danae). Hotter sang the dress rehearsal for a much-delayed production at Salzburg just before all theaters were closed in 1944. In Capriccio, Strauss' final opera, Hotter appeared as Olivier at the 1942 premiere.

With the cessation of World War II hostilities, Hotter's career took him abroad, first to London in 1947 where, among other roles, he performed Wotan in stagings given in English; he remained a revered artist in England for as long as his long career continued. In 1950, he made an impressive debut at New York's Metropolitan Opera as the protagonist in Wagner's Fliegende Holländer. His immense voice and baleful appearance made a profound effect upon both critics and audiences as yet more comparisons to Chaliapin were invoked. After only a few seasons, however, his Met career came to a halt when general manager Rudolf Bing sought to steer him in the direction of secondary parts. The rest of the opera world was only too happy to hear him perform the great Wagnerian and Strauss roles in which he was incomparable and he was a welcome guest in San Francisco and Chicago.

Vienna was one of several European venues to benefit from his appearances in roles he seldom undertook in the United States. Roles such as Don Basilio in Il barbiere di Siviglia and King Phillip in Verdi's Don Carlo were two especially memorable interpretations.

Throughout the 1950s and on through the last of his public appearances in 1972, Hotter's voice was increasingly prone to unsteadiness at full volume. Acute hay fever bedeviled him during summer engagements such as those at the Bayreuth Festival. Still, his performances remained riveting even in vocal decline and Georg Solti chose him for his Ring recording even after he was significantly past his prime.

While better known as an operatic personality, Hotter was a magnificent interpreter of German lieder (he in fact enjoyed performing this music more than opera) and made many recordings of the repertory over a three-decade span. His interpretive genius and ability to scale back his huge voice suited this kind of singing superbly, and the reissue on CD of his best song recordings has won the enthusiasm of a new generation of followers.

Gifted with a shining, spinto weight instrument, tenor Sándor Kónya became a leading artist with his 1958 Bayreuth Festival debut as Lohengrin. So thoroughly did his performance define the Swan Knight that it became Kónya's calling card. The 1958 Bayreuth production has been issued on CD, preserving Kónya's interpretation at its pristine best along with Leonie Rysanek's lustrous Elsa and Astrid Varnay's implacable Ortrud. Later, Kónya recorded the opera commercially for RCA under Erich Leinsdorf, an effort in which the rest of the cast fell short of the tenor's high standards. The easy thrust of Kónya's top register suited both the higher-lying passages allotted to Lohengrin and Walter in Die Meistersinger and afforded him the plangency to do full justice to many Italian roles as well. Kónya's stage deportment was discrete and dignified, setting him apart from many Italian contemporaries given to frantic histrionics.

After beginning his vocal studies in Budapest, Kónya moved first to Detmold, then to Rome and Milan to gain an advanced polish to his technique. In 1951, he made his professional debut in Bielefeld as Turiddu. Following engagements at Darmstadt, Stuttgart, and Hamburg, Kónya became a member of the Städtische Oper in Berlin in 1955. From that point forward, his career became more international in scope. A leading role in the world premiere of Henze's König Hirsch and a performance of Nureddin in Cornelius' comic confection Der Barbier in Bagdad at the Edinburgh Festival attracted widespread attention in 1956. Then Kónya's stunning 1958 Bayreuth debut put his name near the top of management must-engage lists. Paris discovered him in 1959 and the year following, San Francisco heard him in four operas, the first of which was La Fanciulla del West. In the role of Dick Johnson, Kónya's strong instrument was appreciated for its vibrancy and seductive ease. His Lohengrin a month later was hailed as superior and he earned approval for his singing of Rodolfo and Radames, if muted praise for his stage deportment. Kónya's Parsifal at La Scala in 1960 was praised warmly and his Metropolitan Opera debut in 1961 was similarly successful. At London's Covent Garden, Kónya made his first appearance in 1963. As at the Metropolitan, the role was once again Lohengrin.

At the Metropolitan Opera, Kónya sang not only Lohengrin and Walter in the German wing, but also Erik in Der Fliegende Holländer and Max (in an unsuccessful attempt to revive Weber's long-dormant Freischütz). While German and Austrian audiences continued to appreciate Weber's wonderful singspiel, Metropolitan audiences were less enthralled and the work passed back into obscurity, despite Kónya's hand-in-glove suitability for the role of Max.

An artist both outstandingly endowed and versatile in schooling and temperament, Kónya proved immensely useful to the Metropolitan Opera over 14 seasons. In addition to the jugendlicher heldentenor repertory, he was a highly credible Cavaradossi, Pinkerton, Calaf, Radames, and Edgardo. A slight graininess of timbre lent to his voice a slightly veiled quality not unlike that of Björling. Kónya also shared with the Swedish tenor an uncommon blossoming of tone in the upper register. His substantial middle and lower voice provided the firm anchor for his ringing top and allowed him, at his best, to negotiate the transition (passaggio) into the upper register without the strangulation exhibited by so many other German-trained tenors.

Hans Knappertsbusch (1888 - 1965) was one of the most renowned and beloved conductors of the German Romantic repertoire in the mid-twentieth century. Although he grew up playing and loving music, his parents objected to the notion of a musical career. Consequently, Knappertsbusch studied philosophy at Bonn University; in 1908, however, he entered the Cologne Conservatory, where he studied conducting with Fritz Steinbach.

Knappertsbusch began his career as a staff conductor at the Mülheim-Ruhr Theater (1910 - 1912) and then as opera director in his home town (1913 - 1918). Equally important to his development were his summers as an assistant to director Siegfried Wagner and conductor Hans Richter at the Bayreuth Festival. Knappertsbusch's Bayreuth activities led to his taking part in the Netherlands Wagner Festivals in 1913 and 1914. In 1918 Knappertsbusch went to Leipzig and, in 1919, to Dessau, where he became music director in 1920. When Bruno Walter left Munich in 1922, Knappertsbusch was asked to assume the position as music director there.

Knappertsbusch's personality was easygoing; he was notably free of the restlessness and undue ambition that often attended a rising career such as his. He was content mainly to stay in Munich, with the result that he never became as well-known as many of his colleagues. In any case, Munich fully appreciated Knappertsbusch's talents, and he was named conductor for life. However, he refused several demands by the Nazis and was fired from his "lifetime" post in 1936. He conducted a memorable "Salome" in Covent Garden in 1936 and 1937 and guest conducted elsewhere in Germany, but was content to maintain a low profile during the Nazi regime. He left Germany after the Munich debacle, settling in Vienna where he frequently conducted the Philharmonic and the Vienna State Opera. Knappertsbusch's career was again impacted by the Nazis when Germany took over Austria over in 1938; however, he was mostly able to steer of trouble with the Nazis.

Knappertsbusch gained a reputation for broad, magisteral performances of Bruckner and, more and more, seemed to represent the traditional style of unhurried Wagner performances. He was famous for disliking rehearsals, often cutting them short; his orchestral players maintained that this was not the result of laziness, but of complete security in his interpretation and trust of the players. His performances were therefore not rigidly preconceived, but instead had a remarkable freshness and spontaneity.

When the Bayreuth Festivals reopened in 1951, Knappertsbusch worked closely with Wieland Wagner on orchestral matters (though the conductor was known to dislike Wagner's spare, revolutionary stage productions). Knappertsbusch's most outstanding recording is his stereo account of Wagner's "Parsifal" from the Bayreuth stage. ~ Joseph Stevenson