In my own voice

de Christa Ludwig

"Born in Berlin in 1928, Christa at three sang without a mistake the Queen of the Night's aria from The Magic Flute. So said her mother, herself a professional singer. But as a child under the Third Reich, particularly during the final war years, for Christa music was largely silenced, replaced by deprivation, bombings, and fear. The war over, Christa's mezzo-soprano brought her almost immediate recognition, and in 1946 she made her professional debut with the Frankfurt Opera singing Orlovsky in Fledermaus. So began a career that soared for close to 50 years, encompassing dozens of roles, as memorable as they were dissimilar, from the Marschallin and Carmen to Kundry and Amneris, and ending with her farewell appearance, in Vienna in 1994, as Klytamnestra in Elektra." "She sang with the great opera stars of her time, including Callas, Corelli, Domingo, Fischer-Dieskau, Nilsson, Pavarotti, Prey, Price, Rysanek, Vickers, and Schwarzkopf. On stage and in recording studios, she worked under the batons of such celebrated conductors as Bohm, Karajan, Levine, Maazel, Solti, and, of course, Bernstein. She remembers them in rehearsal and performance at the great opera houses of Berlin, Vienna, and Paris, and at the Met."--Jacket.