100Singers's video: 100 Singers - JOHANNA GADSKI

Johanna Gadski, Soprano (1872-1932) Mozart: DON GIOVANNI - "In qual eccessi ... Mi tradi" Wagner: DER FLIEGENDE HOLLÄNDER - "Johohoe! Traft ihr das Schiff im Meere an" Recorded 1910 / 1908 My personal opinion: The year is 1895. The Damrosch German Opera Company performs at the Met: The Prussian born soprano Johanna Gadski, age 23, sings Elsa in LOHENGRIN, her first Wagner anywhere. "Fräulein Gadski, who made her debut as Elsa, has a very light soprano voice, too small for such an auditorium as that of the Metropolitan, but of pretty color. She sang the part respectably, but she's not the kind of singer to make a serious impression ...", the "New York Times" reported. Well, seldom a review was less prophetic ... That season with Damrosch she sang Gutrune in GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG, Elisabeth in TANNHÄUSER and Eva in MEISTERSINGER, followed by guest performances at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and Bayreuth. Her official Metropolitan debut (on tour in Philadelphia) took place on December 28, 1899 as Elisabeth. From that point on, her career was almost exclusively centered in the United States, where this "small-voiced" soprano went on to sing more Wagner performances with the Met than did Lilli Lehmann (1848-1929), Olive Fremstad (1871-1951), Margarete Matzenauer (1881-1963), the incomparable Kirsten Flagstad (1995-1962) or the indestructible Birgit Nilsson (1918-2005). Johanna Gadski goes down in the annals of opera as a very extraordinary singer, mainly memorable for the wide range of music she sang and - overmastered. "Where did they go - those dramatic sopranos like Gadski, with flexible voices wrapped in velvet? Voices that could sing everything from Mozart to Wagner? Voices that flowed like syrup and with enormous reserves of strength ...", a commentator once mourned on the sleeve of a Johanna Gadski record. Her sound documents are evidences of a lost art - and listen to her means listen to a soprano whose breed no longer exists today. Just like Ernestine Schumann-Heink (1861-1936) and Clara Butt (1872-1936), Johanna Gadski has had no real successor. What made her so unique? Her voice was an instrument of tremendous volume and smashing power, and yet capable to project soft subtle nuances and tonal delicacy. Praised as Brünnhilde and the leading Isolde of her era, Gadski was equally admired as Mozart's Donna Elvira and Verdi's Aida, a role she sang alongside De Reszke (1901) and Caruso (1903) at the Met - alternating with Meyerbeer's Valentine in LES HUGUENOTS, Elsa and Elisabeth. In addition to that, Gadski performed within a short period of time different parts like Pamina, the Countess in NOZZE DI FIGARO, Santuzza, Amelia in UN BALLO IN MASCHERA and Micaela in CARMEN - quite certainly proof enough for her versatility and skills. Her "Ach, ich fühl's" from DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE is beautifully shaded in tender and young sound and "magically light on the difficult high B flats", as Steane wrote in "The Grand Tradition", adding "This is one of the great pieces of singing on early records" (Sung in Italian, 1910 - the year she performed Pamina and Elvira at the Salzburg Mozart Festival, invited by Lilli Lehmann). Eight years after the 1895 Elsa, Gadski gave her first Brünnhilde at the Met (1903) - and now, the "New York Times" was full of praise, certifying a voice "of superb strength, vivid life and impulsive energy." The WALKÜRE performance was also noteworthy for an accident: In Act III, Gadski fell and knocked herself out, awakened by the cries of the prompter just in time to sing "War es so schmählich". The following week, she sang with a black eye in AIDA opposite Caruso's first Radames on November 30, 1903. German critic Jürgen Kesting: "Her Aida must have been brilliant. She is one of the few interpreters who has excellently sung both the dramatic "Ritorna vincitor" and the lyrical-meditative "O patria mia". The delicacy, Johanna Gadski could bring to bear in Wagner and Verdi, we also hear in her recordings of Lieder - primarily named in Mendelssohn's "Auf Flügeln des Gesangs" (1912) and Schubert's "Erlkönig" (1906); a lustrous rendition and one of the very few in which the interpreter sings quite rightly with five instead of only four imitated voices. Until 1917, Gadski remained the leading dramatic soprano at the Met. Her career there ended abruptly, when her husband Hans Tauscher (Lieutenant in the German army and representative of the Krupp armory) carried out a toast to the sinking of the Lusitania by German submarines. After ten years in her homeland, she celebrated an amazing comeback at the age of almost 60 on a U.S. tour. But the success was short-lived: In 1932, Johanna Gadski was killed in a traffic accident in Berlin. Her many recordings keep the memory of an accomplished singer who belonged to an extinct type: The species of the sensitive Belcanto-Wagner-virtuosa ...