Ottilie Metzger-Lattermann also formerly Ottilie Metzger-Froitzheim (15 July 1878 – February 1943) was a German

contralto A contralto () is a type of classical female singing voice whose vocal range is the lowest female voice type. The contralto's vocal range is fairly rare; similar to the mezzo-soprano, and almost identical to that of a countertenor, typically b ...

who was a famous performer of works by

Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...

during the 1910s, and who after her retirement was murdered in

Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

Career

Matzger was born in

Frankfurt Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

. Her first husband was the author Clemens Froitzheim. In Hamburg she met the

bass-baritone A bass-baritone is a high-lying bass or low-lying "classical" baritone voice type which shares certain qualities with the true baritone voice. The term arose in the late 19th century to describe the particular type of voice required to sing thr ...

Theodor Lattermann who became her second husband. From 1901 until 1912, she sang at

Bayreuth Festival The Bayreuth Festival (german: link=no, Bayreuther Festspiele) is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of operas by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner are presented. Wagner himself conceived ...

, where her Erda in ''

Der Ring des Nibelungen (''The Ring of the Nibelung''), WWV 86, is a cycle of four German-language epic music dramas composed by Richard Wagner. The works are based loosely on characters from Germanic heroic legend, namely Norse legendary sagas and the '' Nibe ...

'' was esteemed. She was a student of Selma Nicklass-Kempner, Georg Vogel and Emanuel Reicher (acting). Her debut was 1898 in Halle, followed by engagements in Cologne, then from 1903 to 1915 first contralto with the

Hamburg State Opera The Hamburg State Opera (in German: Staatsoper Hamburg) is a German opera company based in Hamburg. Its theatre is near the square of Gänsemarkt. Since 2015, the current ''Intendant'' of the company is Georges Delnon, and the current ''General ...

and played opposite

Enrico Caruso Enrico Caruso (, , ; 25 February 1873 – 2 August 1921) was an Italian operatic first lyrical tenor then dramatic tenor. He sang to great acclaim at the major opera houses of Europe and the Americas, appearing in a wide variety of roles (74) ...

. Then followed Dresden, Bayreuth Festival,

Vienna State Opera The Vienna State Opera (, ) is an opera house and opera company based in Vienna, Austria. The 1,709-seat Renaissance Revival venue was the first major building on the Vienna Ring Road. It was built from 1861 to 1869 following plans by August S ...

, Saint Petersburg, Prague, Zurich Opera, Amsterdam, Munich, Budapest,

Royal Opera House The Royal Opera House (ROH) is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply Covent Garden, after a previous use of the site. It is the home of The Royal Op ...

Covent Garden and tours with conductor

Leo Blech Leo Blech (21 April 1871 – 25 August 1958) was a German opera composer and conductor who is perhaps most famous for his work at the Königliches Opernhaus (later the Berlin State Opera / Staatsoper Unter den Linden) from 1906 to 1937, and late ...

in the USA. This ended in 1925 with the illness of Theodor who died on 4 March 1926 aged 46. From 1927 she taught singing at the

Stern Conservatory The Stern Conservatory (''Stern'sches Konservatorium'') was a private music school in Berlin with many distinguished tutors and alumni. The school is now part of Berlin University of the Arts. History It was founded in 1850 as the ''Berliner Musi ...

in Berlin, where she herself had studied. Metzger-Lattermann continued to perform as a

Lied In Western classical music tradition, (, plural ; , plural , ) is a term for setting poetry to classical music to create a piece of polyphonic music. The term is used for any kind of song in contemporary German, but among English and French s ...

er recitalist, often accompanied by

Richard Strauss Richard Georg Strauss (; 11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a German composer, conductor, pianist, and violinist. Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras, he has been described as a successor of Richard Wag ...

and

Hans Pfitzner Hans Erich Pfitzner (5 May 1869 – 22 May 1949) was a German composer, conductor and polemicist who was a self-described anti-modernist. His best known work is the post-Romantic opera ''Palestrina'' (1917), loosely based on the life of the s ...

. She gave her last concerts in 1933 under

Bruno Walter Bruno Walter (born Bruno Schlesinger, September 15, 1876February 17, 1962) was a German-born conductor, pianist and composer. Born in Berlin, he escaped Nazi Germany in 1933, was naturalised as a French citizen in 1938, and settled in the Un ...

in Berlin and

Otto Klemperer Otto Nossan Klemperer (14 May 18856 July 1973) was a 20th-century conductor and composer, originally based in Germany, and then the US, Hungary and finally Britain. His early career was in opera houses, but he was later better known as a concer ...

in Dresden, with the seizure of power by Hitler. After 1933, under the Nazi regime, Metzger-Lattermann continued to perform for Jewish audiences, on at least one occasion in a Lieder evening with the

baritone A baritone is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the bass and the tenor voice-types. The term originates from the Greek (), meaning "heavy sounding". Composers typically write music for this voice in the r ...

Erhard Wechselmann, who was also to perish in Auschwitz. In 1933, the American theatre impresario George Blumental (a former associate of

Oscar Hammerstein I Oscar Hammerstein I (8 May 18461 August 1919) was a German-born businessman, theater impresario, and composer in New York City. His passion for opera led him to open several opera houses, and he rekindled opera's popularity in America. He was ...

, who in 1917 had tried to set up theatres for American troops in Paris), tried to arrange with Georg Hartmann and Arthur Hirsch to bring over conductor Blech and a troupe of 12 Jewish opera singers to present Wagner's ''Ring'' in New York. Hirsch's assistant, Otto Metzger, was Ottilie's brother and Ottilie was on the list. Blumental's plans came to nothing, partly due to the unavailability of Blech, Klemperer, and Walter. Ottilie-Metzger-Gedenkplatte-Bayreuth

Metzger-Lattermann and her daughter fled to Brussels in 1939, but there were later rounded up by the Nazis and sent to the camps. She died in

. The exact circumstances of the deaths of herself and her daughter are unknown.

Bayreuth memorial

During the 1970s, a Bayreuth antiquarian bookseller, Peer Baedeker petitioned

Winifred Wagner Winifred Marjorie Wagner ( Williams; 23 June 1897 – 5 March 1980) was the English-born wife of Siegfried Wagner, the son of Richard Wagner, and ran the Bayreuth Festival after her husband's death in 1930 until the end of World War II in 19 ...

for a plaque to "

Richard Breitenfeld Richard Breitenfeld (13 October 1869 – 16 December 1944) was a German baritone. He was a member of the Frankfurt Opera ensemble and was murdered in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Breitenfeld was born in Reichenberg (now in the Cze ...

, Henriette Gottlieb, Ottilie Metzger-Lattermann – Honoured as festival singers – Murdered in Nazi concentration camps" to be installed at Bayreuth.''

Opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librett ...

'' Vol. 48, 1997. pp. 914–5. "He olfgang Wagnerhas not even been willing to have a modest memorial for the three Bayreuth singers who perished in concentration camps. The proposal for a memorial plaque was proposed to Wolfgang ages ago by a retired singer and Bayreuth antiquarian bookseller, Peer Baedeker. And therein lies a revealing story. When the centenary festival opened in 1976 with a wreath-laying ceremony at Wagner's grave, Baedeker placed his own wreath with a ribbon attached, with the words: 'In memory of Richard Breitenfeld, Henriette Gottlieb, Ottilie Metzger-Lattermann – Honoured as festival singers – Murdered in Nazi concentration camps.' Within 24 hours of the ceremony, the ribbon had vanished. An article about the incident, which later appeared in an Israeli newspaper, was sent to Winifred, who wrote the following ineffable letter to Baedeker: 'Herr Heinrich Schaar in Munich sends me from time to time cuttings from the Israel Nachrichten, including this one. ... Herr Schaar appears to suspect that this was my doing or at my behest, since otherwise he would not have sent me the press cutting. In the first place I had no idea you had laid a wreath, and in the second I seldom go to RW's resting place; since it is now permanently open to the public, it is never possible to visit the grave alone. I myself never heard Frau Metzger-Lattermann in Bayreuth, but I know that my husband had a very high impression of her. Frau

Gottlieb Gottlieb (formerly D. Gottlieb & Co.) was an American arcade game corporation based in Chicago, Illinois. History The main office and plant was located at 1140-50 N. Kostner Avenue until the early 1970s when a new modern plant and office was lo ...

sang here in my time and I had a high opinion of her as well. Herr Breitenfeld is unknown to me. But were all three really killed at Auschwitz? I would doubt that in the case of Frau Lattermann, since she must have been terribly old. With best wishes, also to your wife, whom I recently greeted in front of

Wahnfried Wahnfried was the name given by Richard Wagner to his villa in Bayreuth. The name is a German compound of (delusion, madness) and (peace, freedom). Financed by King Ludwig II of Bavaria, the house was constructed from 1872 to 1874 under Bayreu ...

.' – The casualness of this brush-off, the brutal indifference to the murder of three old singers speaks volumes about the attitude in Bayreuth to its past. And so the monument that the festival visitor sees today on the Green Hill – the massive copy of the bust of a glowering Wagner made for Hitler by the Nazi sculptor

Arno Breker Arno Breker (19 July 1900 – 13 February 1991) was a German architect and sculptor who is best known for his public works in Nazi Germany, where they were endorsed by the authorities as the antithesis of degenerate art. He was made official ...

– is, properly viewed, a brazen symbol of Bayreuth's."

Recordings

Richard Wagner, ''Siegfried'', "Stark ruft das Lied" (1908)
Opera Nederland, profile, photo

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Metzger-Lattermann German people who died in Auschwitz concentration camp Musicians from Frankfurt 1943 deaths 1878 births Operatic contraltos German operatic contraltos Jewish opera singers 20th-century German women opera singers German Jews who died in the Holocaust