The most controversial singer in Europe right now is 80 years old and sang her last recital in 1979.
The voice and art of soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf always did inspire strong differences of opinion, and now the arguments have heated up again because of new revelations about her Nazi past in "Elisabeth Schwarzkopf" (Gollancz), a biography by Alan Jefferson published in England in January.At the time of her American debut, in 1953, Schwarzkopf was picketed, but the protests soon faded away. The rumors never did, though: Speculation about her wartime affiliations shadowed Schwarzkopf throughout an international career that spanned more than 30 years.
The soprano herself has always deflected questions about her early career in Berlin (1938-43), and she has always resisted inquiries about her membership in the Nazi Party. Jefferson proceeded without Schwarzkopf's cooperation and unearthed long-suppressed information in the Berlin Document Center and in the Information Services of the U.S. Forces in Austria.
Schwarzkopf, who now lives in retirement in Switzerland, has not responded to Jefferson's book.
The flurry of excitement seems to bemuse Jefferson, the author of previous, uncontroversial biographies of Sir Thomas Beecham, Lotte Lehmann and Richard Strauss.
Reached at his home in Cornwall, Jefferson said, "Everyone so far has seized on the Nazi aspect," he said. "But my intention was to write a musical biography about a marvelous singer. The Nazi period had happened in her life, so it had to be included."
Schwarzkopf always was a singer people loved - or loved to hate. In England, at least, she remains a cultural icon; in 1992, the Queen named Schwarzkopf a Dame Commander of the British Empire. Dame Elisabeth still stands third among the all-time best-selling classical artists for the international recording company EMI, ranking just behind Itzhak Perlman and Maria Callas.
Last December, Opera News celebrated Schwarzkopf's 80th birthday with a tribute, an attack and an interview with the soprano herself. The interviewer brought up the touchy subject of Schwarzkopf's Berlin period, presumably as he headed out the door. Schwarzkopf responded, "I don't have to set things straight. I'm not responsible - in no way. When I received the highest German order you can get, or Dame of the British Empire, don't you think they'd have gone through all the things there are to go through?"
The interview also quotes a famous letter Schwarzkopf wrote to The New York Times in 1983 in response to allegations about her Nazi sympathies. "May I also point out," Schwarzkopf wrote, "that joining the NSDAP (at age 24) was akin to joining a union, and for exactly the same reason: to have a job."
Jefferson establishes that Schwarzkopf was a member of the Nazi Students' Association for four years before she joined the Nazi party as a full adult member in 1939. She served for a school term as "Fuehrerin" at the Berlin Hochschule fuer Musik, where her responsibility was to keep the other students in line. To counter the union-card argument, Jefferson points out that only eight of the 110 members of the Berlin Philharmonic found it necessary to join the party.
As a young soloist at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin, Schwarzkopf advanced from cadet roles into occasional appearances in larger parts, sometimes hopscotching over more established singers. Jefferson argues that such advancement would not have been possible without a powerful protector in the government, particularly because the willful and exceedingly ambitious young soprano sometimes got herself into disciplinary trouble. In occupied Paris, Schwarzkopf was furious when she was demoted from the starring part of Adele in "Die Fledermaus" to the small speaking role of Cousin Ida; she hurled her shoe at the cyclorama, tearing a hole in the expensive backdrop curtain.
In 1942, and presumably on other occasions, Schwarzkopf signed a letter to the general manager of the Deutsche Oper "Heil Hitler!" She also appeared in five propaganda movies made under the supervision of Joseph Goebbels, and Jefferson writes a carefully worded passage describing how some of Goebbels' other film stars earned their roles. Jefferson reprints a still from a movie in which Schwarzkopf, recumbent on a haystack, displays her legs, looking for all the world like a blond translation of the famous image of Jane Russell in "Outlaw."
After the war, Schwarzkopf lied to the Allied authorities in Austria about her past activities, and she was permitted to resume her career. At that same time, she met the powerful British recording impresario Walter Legge; he signed her up and ultimately married her.
Legge had vast knowledge of music and strong ideas about it, but no formal musical training: His protege Herbert von Karajan became the conductor Legge would have liked to be, and Schwarzkopf became the important lieder singer Legge couldn't be - "her master's voice," as some unkind observers put it.
The rest of Jefferson's book is less sensational than the chapters about the soprano's early years, but it documents the public side of her triumphant international career with substantial detail and, occasionally, even some sympathy.
The publication of Jefferson's book has cast a pall over EMI's celebratory 80th-birthday issue of a three-CD set, "The Elisabeth Schwarzkopf Songbook," which contains many rarities and some previously unreleased recordings, some of them very beautiful. And it has overshadowed the recent publication of a rival volume, "Elisabeth Schwarzkopf: A Career on Record," an essay and discography by Alan Sanders and J.B. Steane. Sanders' discography is littered with errors, and the introductory essay by Steane is em-bar-rass-ing. It is an account of three weeks spent listening with Schwarz-kopf to her own records. The soprano tends either to admire her performances without reservation or to detest them - a tendency that characterizes many of her critics as well. Steane was placed in an impossible position; all he could do was fawn. Amadeus Press has imported the Sanders/
Steane book, and Northeastern University Press will bring out the American edition of Jefferson's book in August.
In conversation Jefferson was unenthusiastic about a hypothetical defense of Schwarzkopf. Was she not simply born in the wrong place at the wrong time? Was she in any position to do anything other than what she did? Weren't her political affiliations simply part of her ambition to get ahead in the world, rather than a reflection of her personal convictions?
"I'm afraid that's not so," Jefferson said. "She took advantage of her looks, which you can't blame any woman for doing. I think she was clever enough to see that if she played on her own appearance and charm she could gain the powerful support which would propel her fast. That of course happened, and then she met Walter Legge. Already she was playing duck and drakes with the authorities, but she came out on top. She came to England and started making recordings; Karajan took her up and she was made. It was an extraordinary career, a spectacular career, based on a relatively modest instrument. She wasn't blameless of artifice in some of her singing - which rather spoils it for me."