Drama doesn't have to mean hysteria.
Her voice was the most sensual, erotic among the mezzo-sopranos: on the death of the singer of the century Christa Ludwig.
Sometimes you could even meet them in Erl. Because she gave a master class not far from the Tyrolean Festival and therefore treated herself to opera in the evenings. And if you happened to be sitting next to her, she liked to chatter through the break. To rave about the director and the young colleagues up front, there was of course also praise. Who else besides Christa Ludwig was allowed to do that. A singer of the century who died on Saturday at the age of 93 in her adopted home Klosterneuburg near Vienna.
In general, Ludwig was as amusing as it was irritatingly open. She could be wonderfully upset about the “press corpses” that constricted her breasts in trousers like Octavian and Cherubino. And she was one of the few who addressed a taboo in singing careers: the menopause, which almost costs the career of every soprano and mezzo and which requires the voice to be rebuilt.
Anyone who has heard Christa Ludwig once, whether live or on CD, will never get her out of their head.
Her voice was the most sensual, erotic among the mezzo-sopranos.
Seductive, noble, with perfectly dosed opulence, more wrapped in velvet than overwhelming with a steely offensive.
The latter was also the reason why the dramatic soprano roles didn't work out.
Ludwig never made a secret of the fact that she longed for the prima donna food.
Beethoven's “Fidelio” -Leonore called her her “problem child”, Bernstein, Böhm and Karajan wanted Wagner's Isolde from her in vain.
As Dorabella, Elvira or Octavian, she has spoiled opera fans
But why also the orientation upwards? As Elvira, Dorabella, Brangäne or Octavian, she ruined us hopelessly, including in Verdi's Messa da Requiem, by the way. And especially in exalted roles, Christa Ludwig set standards, as Ortrud, Dyer and Lady Macbeth, because she demonstrated: Drama does not mean hysteria, but blazing, vibrating energy that radiates from within. When she threw out Ortrud's curse, she provoked an ovation and thus an interruption of "Lohengrin" - a sacrilege for Wagner. In order to adapt a Schumann song, she was the most splendid of all in her subject.
For her, who was born in Berlin, anything other than this job would not have been possible: her father was a singer and artistic director, her mother a singer and teacher. After engagements in Frankfurt am Main and Darmstadt, among others, Christa Ludwig was discovered by Karl Böhm for the Vienna State Opera. The world career that followed is well known.
Ludwig remained traditional in a personable way.
She lived for art, less for advertising hoopla, and she sang like that.
The fact that she stood up to the declamatory to text-obsessed competition in the song sector fits into the picture.
She never got into lecturing, instinctively felt the sound processes and trusted her intuition.
As a Mahler interpreter, she set standards precisely because she did not carry emotions in front of her and thus doubled them.
When asked about her legendary "Lied von der Erde", immortalized on a record with tenor Fritz Wunderlich and conductor Otto Klemperer, Ludwig could only answer: "I just sang."
She enjoyed her retirement in Klosterneuburg
Christa Ludwig was married twice, first to baritone Walter Berry, which soon drifted into a problematic relationship, then to director Paul-Émile Deiber.
She also trusted her experience when it came to the subject of eroticism on stage: "Either you have experienced everything yourself - or at least you believe in it."
Since the 1960s, Ludwig lived in Klosterneuburg near Vienna - not far from her home opera house, where she said goodbye on December 14, 1994.
As a bizarre, rigged old woman plagued by nightmares.
The Klytämnestra in Strauss' “Elektra” didn't quite fit her luxury mezzo, nor did the laughter at the end of the big scene, which colleagues succeeded in more diabolically.
Ludwig saw it in a very practical way: "That was my Elektra replacement because I could never sing something that was highly dramatic."
She also chose the mother monster for her last performance in Munich at the Bavarian State Opera. After 1994, after 769 appearances in Vienna alone, she has protested again and again how wonderful she found the end of life. Finally no more stage fright, finally eat a hearty roast, finally no longer have to be careful with wine, above all: finally being allowed to be lazy. Afterwards she was regularly seen at the Vienna State Opera to hold court in the front third of the parquet. Nobody could get past Ludwig, whether during a career or in retirement.
