Ljuba Welitsch (Veličkova; 10 July 1913 – 1 September 1996) was an operatic soprano. She was born in Borisovo, Bulgaria, studied in Sofia and Vienna, and sang in opera houses in Austria and Germany in the late 1930s and early and mid-1940s. In 1946 she became an Austrian citizen.
Welitsch became best known in the title role of Richard Strauss's Salome, in which she was coached by the composer. Her international career was short, its start delayed by the Second World War and its end hastened by vocal problems. It took off in 1947 in London and continued in New York from 1949, but her starring days were over by the mid-1950s. Her international career was just before the days when complete studio recordings of operas were common, and although some live recordings survive from broadcasts, her recorded legacy is not extensive.
From the mid-1950s, Welitsch sang character roles in operas and acted in stage plays. She died in Vienna at the age of 83.
Life and career Early years Welitsch was born in Borissovo, Bulgaria, and grew up on her family's farm with her two sisters.Tubman, Howard. "New Prima Donna", The New York Times, 13 February 1949, p. X7 Her interest in music began as a young girl;Harewood, Lord, and Harold Rosenthal. "Ljuba Welitsch", Opera, volume 4 (1953), pp. 72–77 when she was eight one of her sisters gave her a violin, and for a while she considered becoming a professional player. After leaving high school in Shumen she read philosophy at Sofia University, gaining a PhD.O'Connor, Patrick. "A Salome coached by Strauss", The Guardian, 3 September 1996, p. 18 In Sofia she sang in choirs, and studied music with Georgi Zlatev-Cherkin. With funding from the Bulgarian government she moved to Vienna to study with Theo Lierhammer, professor of singing at the State Academy."Ljuba Welitsch", The Times, 2 September 1996, p. 23Wechsler, Bert. "Ljuba Welitsch", Music Journal, Winter 1985, pp. 5–8
Welitsch made her operatic debut in Sofia in 1936, in a small part in Louise. Her first major role was Nedda in Pagliacci at the Graz Opera in the same year.Branscombe, Peter. "Welitsch (Veličkova), Ljuba", Grove Music Online, Oxford University Press, retrieved 31 August 2018 She learned her craft with the Graz company over the next three years, singing an unusually wide range of soprano roles, in operas by composers from Mozart to Wagner, Humperdinck, Puccini and Richard Strauss.
Between then and the end of the Second World War she was a member of opera companies in Hamburg (1941–1943), Munich and Berlin (1943–1946). While in Berlin she played the role of the young Composer in Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos. Strauss saw her and was impressed; he arranged for her to sing the title role in a new production of his Salome at the Vienna Volksoper in 1944 to mark his eightieth birthday. He helped her prepare the part, and it became the one with which she was most closely associated. They worked on the piece for six weeks before the performance; Strauss attended rehearsals every day.Coleman, Emily. "Ljuba Welitsch", Opera News, November 1996, p. 60
Welitsch took Austrian citizenship in 1946. She became a key member of the group of singers the opera manager Franz Salmhofer gathered around him as he strove to rebuild the Vienna State Opera company at the end of the war. In Vienna she further extended her repertoire, adding roles in French, German, Italian and Russian operas. As well as Salome, other roles with which she was particularly associated in Vienna were Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly and Donna Anna in Don Giovanni.
International career In 1947 Salmhofer took the company to London at the invitation of Covent Garden Opera. Welitsch was not completely unknown to British audiences, having been heard, and well-received, in performances of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and Verdi's Requiem under John Barbirolli, but her reception in the opera house made headlines. At Covent Garden as Donna Anna and Salome she made a sensation, eclipsing her fellow company member Maria Cebotari, with whom she was sharing both roles. According to the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians she "dazzl[ed] London audiences with the passion, vocal purity and compelling force" of her performances. While in London, Welitsch took part in two broadcast performances of Strauss's Elektra, conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham in the presence of the composer."Broadcast Opera", The Times, 27 October 1947, p. 8
David Webster, the director of the Royal Opera House, recognising Welitsch's talent, secured her services for the resident company, with whom she appeared between 1948 and 1953 in Aida, La bohème, Salome, Tosca and The Queen of Spades."Ljuba Welitsch", Royal Opera House performance database, retrieved 30 August 2018 In London, as in Vienna, operas were then customarily performed in the local language, and Welitsch, like other German singers performing at Covent Garden, had to learn her roles in English. As Musetta in La bohème, according to The Times, "she more often than not sang whoever was playing Mimì off the stage", although those Mimìs included Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Victoria de los Angeles.La bohème and La bohème, Royal Opera House performance database, retrieved 30 August 2018 When Welitsch sang Donna Anna for the Glyndebourne Festival Opera at the Edinburgh Festival in 1948, the critic Frank Howes wrote that she was a tiger who could have eaten both Don Giovanni and Don Ottavio "and still have called for more"."Glyndebourne Opera at Edinburgh", The Times, 27 August 1948, p. 7 In the same year she sang in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler at the Royal Albert Hall."Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra", The Times, 7 October 1948, p. 6 In 1949 for Glyndebourne at Edinburgh she sang Amelia in Un ballo in maschera."Un ballo in maschera, 22 August 1949", Glyndebourne performance archive, retrieved 30 August 2018
Also in 1949 Welitsch made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, in Salome; it was given in a double bill with Puccini's Gianni Schicchi, in which she did not appear. Comparing her with her predecessors as Salome, the critic Irving Kolodin wrote, "those who were better looking could not match Miss Welitsch's vocal performance, for euphony, clarity and meaning, and those who were comparable singers had no such physical identity with the role. Q.E.D. Miss Welitsch is the Metropolitan's Salome of record."Quoted in "Met Performance CID:149720: Gianni Schicchi (40) Salome (25)": Metropolitan Opera House 02/4/1949", Metropolitan Opera House archives, retrieved 30 August 2018 Variety reported the praise of Welitsch's singing and acting, but concentrated more on her performance of Salome's dance of the seven veils: "Miss Welitsch really went to town, putting on a shimmy dance that makes 52nd Street swing coryphées look pale in comparison, and that had the Met audience gasping.""Met's Sensational New Soprano", Variety, 9 February 1949, p. 60 The historian Kenneth Morgan writes:
At the Metropolitan Opera, Welitsch sang the roles with which she was associated in London, and added Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus. She returned to the house later in her career when she had switched to character roles, playing the non-singing character the Duchess of Crakentorp in La fille du régiment in 1972."Ljuba Welitsch", Metropolitan Opera House archives, retrieved 30 August 2018
Welitsch's international career was mainly centred on Vienna, London and New York, although she remained loyal to Graz and made guest appearances there. She was twice invited to perform at La Scala, Milan, but her commitments were already too many to allow her to accept.
Later years By 1953 Welitsch had developed nodules on her vocal cords, necessitating surgery. That, compounded by her unusually high number of performances, led to a swift deterioration in her singing, and she was obliged to give up the star roles for which she was most celebrated. She had expected a longer career, and had been contemplating taking on the role of Isolde in a few years' time, although she was not enamoured of Wagner in general. The critic Tim Ashley writes that Welitsch's farewell to Salome came on film in Carol Reed's 1955 thriller The Man Between, in a scene set in the Berlin State Opera during a performance of the opera. "You only see her in long shot, though it's enough to get an idea of what she was like on stage."
Welitsch was still able to sing roles such as Magda in Puccini's La rondine in Vienna in 1955, and to record the character part of Marianne, the duenna, in Herbert von Karajan's 1956 set of Der Rosenkavalier. She successfully turned to the non-operatic stage, in parts such as June in a German translation of The Killing of Sister George in Berlin in 1970.
Long after her retirement Welitsch continued to be regarded by professionals with admiration and affection. The Decca producer John Culshaw wrote in 1967 that she was a welcome guest at recording sessions, and "one of our regular jobs is to bring kippers to Vienna for Welitsch". Her hospitality was famous, and she remained the focus of public attention even in retirement, as a member of first-night audiences.
Welitsch was twice married and twice divorced; she had no children. She died in Vienna after a series of strokes, aged 83.
Critical assessment
In 1953, writing while Welitsch's career was at its height, Lord Harewood, editor of Opera, said of her:
Harewood's colleague Harold Rosenthal had earlier expressed strong doubt that recordings could do justice to Welitsch's powers.Rosenthal, Harold, "Can the gramophone capture the art of Welitsch?", Musical Express, 7 October 1949, p. 3 Rosenthal's comments were written in 1949, when Welitsch had made only a handful of recordings, but writing long after her retirement, J. B. Steane also felt that the various recordings available by then did not flatter her:
Steane later added that a recently unearthed live recording from a broadcast of 1944 "shows the young voice at its finest, and conveys perhaps the most vivid impression of the temperament".
Irving Kolodin's unflattering judgment of Welitsch's beauty was not shared by other critics. Philip Hope-Wallace, in an article titled "The most beautiful woman I know", called her "incontrovertibly beautiful, if in a very individual way",Hope-Wallace, Philip. "The most beautiful woman I know", The Guardian, 27 February 1969, p. 11 and Ashley called her "20th-century opera's ultimate sex goddess ... but she was also one of the greatest singers who ever lived."Ashley, Tim. "To die for", The Guardian, 3 May 2002, p. B23 After her dance of the seven veils in Salome the pin-up artist George Petty put her at the top of his list of "the world's best undressed women".Reed, Ernie. "Ljuba goes modest", Stars and Stripes, 2 October 1949, p. 5
The soprano Leontyne Price said that it was seeing Welitsch in Salome that made an operatic career her own goal in life. In Oxford University Press's Dictionary of Opera Characters (2008), Joyce Bourne writes, "Among famous Salomes, e.g. Emmy Destinn, Maria Jeritza, Maria Cebotari, Christel Goltz, Birgit Nilsson, Josephine Barstow, Hildegard Behrens and Catherine Malfitano, probably the most famous was the Bulgarian soprano Ljuba Welitsch."Bourne, Joyce. "Salome", A Dictionary of Opera Characters, Oxford University Press, January 2008
Recordings Complete operas Welitsch's international career ended at about the time long-playing records were becoming the predominant medium for recordings. They opened the way for complete recordings of a large number of operas, but Welitsch retired too early to be part of this new development. Her only studio recording of a complete opera was Die Fledermaus (in English, without dialogue) recorded for the American Columbia label in December 1950 and January 1951 with the same cast and conductor as the contemporary Metropolitan Opera production.