20 Under Appreciated Singers of the Past - 5 (Elisabeth Grümmer)

For years, hardcore opera buffs have praised the name of Elisabeth Grümmer. While she isn't, in reality, all that unknown, I think she is entirely underrated.

Elisabeth Grümmer (neé Schilz) was born on 31. March 1911 at Niederjeutz in Alsace-Lorraine. Because her family was German, in 1918 they were evicted from Lorraine and moved to the theatre town of Meiningen. She attended a drama school there and studied classical theatre and acting. Her stage debut was as Klärchen in Goethe's Egmont. She started a relatively successful stage and film career, but after her marriage to Detlev Grümmer, all of her artistic goals seemingly came to an end. Detlev Grümmer was a violinist and concert-master at the Landestheater Meiningen. When Detlev was engaged at the Stadttheater Aachen, they moved to Aachen and everything changed.

At the time, the music directer in Aachen was the young, Herbert von Karajan. Through his encouragement, she began studying voice and in 1941, he cast her in what was her operatic debut as the First Flower Maiden in Wagner's Parsifal. She became engaged from 1942 - 1944 in Duisburg. It is no secret that the second world war took a huge toll on the German people, and her situation is no exception. Her husband, unfortunately, was killed in an air raid. He died in their basement holding his violin to his chest. His death was a major blow to Elisabeth, she went on to say that he was her only love, and she was never remarried. After that, she dedicated much more of herself to her career. She became a regular at the Städtische Oper in West Berlin, and remained a regular until the end of her career. She went on to sing at all the great opera houses from Covent Garden and the Met to La Scala and Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. Between 1957 and 1961 she became a regular at the Bayreuther Festspiele finding a real niche for herself in the lyric Wagner roles.

Like many singers of her generation, she confined her repertoire to a very select few roles that she made very much her own. Namely roles like Pamina (Zauberföte), Fiordiligi (Così fan tutte), Contessa Almaviva (Nozze di Figaro), Donna Anna (Don Giovanni), Agathe (Freischütz), Marschallin (Rosenkavalier), Countess Madeleine (Capriccio), Desdemona (Otello) and the Wagnerian roles of Elsa (Lohengrin), Eva (Meistersinger), Elisabeth (Tannhäuser), Freia (Das Rheingold) and Gutrune (Götterdämmerung).

Grümmer had a voice of exceptional beauty and freshness. Her elegant approach and elevated artistry lent itself well to sophisticated, noble roles. While nuanced and regal sounding, her voice had a brilliant shimmer, and a youthful quality that remained well into the later part of her career. Her performances, even on disc, are something to treasure. She had such an inward expression of musicality and text, it felt to many as though she was completely unaware of an audience. She really let those lucky enough to see her live into her own personal musical world. There was never a feeling of any sort of artifice at all in her voice, and through her utter simplicity of tone, she managed to achieve the utmost profundity, and warm-hearted sincerity. There isn't one performance I have heard where I couldn't hear her "bearing her soul" through the music. She was capable of finding the balance between "singer" and "actor" that is so rarely achieved in the opera world and virtually never achieved in the world of musical theatre.

She was equally respected on the concert platform, where her Frauenliebe und -leben was praised especially, probably due to the trust she had in Chamisso's texts, which most, quite frankly do not, and her "Ihr habt nun traurigkeit" in Brahm's Ein deutsches Requiem, is praised as among the best examples of the aria ever recorded.

Unfortunately she was not recorded nearly as much as her contemporary colleagues, such as Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Lisa della Casa, Irmgard Seefried, etc. But the recordings that we do have show her off to her best possible advantage.

She passed away on 6. November 1986 in Germany. I hope you find the charm and glamour of these recordings that give us all a glance at what the opera world looked like in a more civilized age.