frieda hempel
Sopran
JUNE 26, 1885

‘Great music beautifully sung bears a message from heaven. Singing heals the spirit and lightens the heart.’  Frieda Hempel^[1]

Born in Leipzig in 1885, the precocious talent of Frieda Hempel debuted in the Königliche Oper in Berlin in the role of Frau Fluth in Otto Nicolai’s Die Lustigen Weiber von Windsor in 1905.^[2] She had been a star pupil at the Conservatorium, first as a pianist and then only later as a singer. ^[3] According to her own account, her stage career actually began when as a young child she joined a travelling circus in the role of a kidnapped baby!

Her voice was first noted as a coloratura of exceptional flexibility and warmth. Indeed Richard Strauss himself rewrote parts of the role of Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos after hearing her perform. ‘One evening when we gave The Barber of Seville, he [Strauss] came running to my dressing room, all excited and said, “Jesus. Jesus, you just sang a high F-sharp!” I had sung the Proch variations with a high F-sharp and had added other high notes, and he just could not get over it. This inspired him to write the part of Zerbinetta for me, in Ariadne auf Naxos,…. I have the original manuscript as well as the first printing, with all his corrections.’^[4] Strauss was so enamoured of her talent that he saw in her, his ideal singer as the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, one of the roles for which she is now best remembered.  Otto Kahn, onetime chairman of the Metropolitan Opera once told her, ‘Miss Hempel, no matter how often I hear you in Der Rosenkavalier, I never fail to get chills down my spine when you sing, “Ich weiss auch nichts – gar nichts.” You fill that pause with so much meaning.’^[5] Her other show-stopper was as the Königin der Nacht in Mozart’s Zauberflöte. And of Mozart she later wrote, ‘I know of no other composer who lifts me in spirit as he does. It is like drinking champagne.’ In the later judgement of J.B.Stearne ‘she was at least as good a lyric soprano as she was a coloratura.’^[6]

In the same year as her debut in Berlin, she was invited to sing in Bayreuth by Cosima Wagner. At the age of 22 she found herself after having performed Lucia in Berlin on 11 September 1907 to newspaper reviews stating she ‘was established as the leading coloratura soprano’ in Germany. ^[7] Singing with Caruso, Chaliapin and other greats gives some idea of her talent and musical gifts.^[8] Frieda sang in Ostende, which in those balmy days just before the First World War was a summer resort for high society, and where she was given perhaps the finest compliment other singers could give, ‘they were rehearsing a Wagnerian opera in an upstairs room when Hermann Gura came running up to them and cried, “Come downstairs! Come and listen! Here is a girl who has everything!” They all came downstairs and listened at the back of the auditorium. “It was true, you were really unbelievable,”^[9] In 1912 she established herself at New York’s Metropolitan and a mere seven years later in 1919 she virtually ceased singing in opera and concentrated solely on concert appearances. By this time, she had become a naturalised citizen of the United States, something for which political currents in her homeland would not forgive.

Her concert career can be divided into two types of appearance; as herself, Frieda Hempel, and as Jenny Lind in a Jenny Lind Show, which had started as a tribute to Jenny Lind on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Lind’s birth. Such was its popularity it was revived for a number of years afterwards.^[10] Yet it is clear that she had a fascination with Lind,  for when she visited Lind’s home at Wynd House she recalled, ‘The caretaker took us in and showed us the house. I sat down at her piano and let my thoughts wander.I  thought of her sitting in that very room, practicing, practicing, and letting her soul talk. I saw her in front of me, in her hoop skirt; I sensed that at any moment she would walk in, and I felt great reverence when I touched that piano. Had she been alive, I would not have touched it.’^[11]

Despite her leaving behind the world of opera, her concert work should not be underestimated. She herself wrote, ‘Concert work is much more rewarding than operatic work, but it is also more demanding. As a concert artist, I stand alone on the stage for an hour-and-a-half or longer. I have absolutely nothing to aid me. I come out, stand in the bow of the piano, and there I am. I must create setting and scenery out of nothing but my inner sense of beauty and my art. I must live the song so fully that my audience sees and feels what I see and feel. My imagination must become its imagination.^[12]

And perhaps too, we need to recall that Hempel embraced developments in technology to reach a wider audience, just as her contemporary Caruso had done. She sang on live radio, and included a special service for radio-telephone subscribers. The subscribers could listen live to a concert through their telephone!^[13] And move over Johnny Cash –  Frieda sang a memorable concert at the Auburn Jail in New York State for 1400 prisoners. The occasion clearly moved her as much as the prisoners. ‘It made no difference to whom I was going to sing – I would still give the very best that was in me to give. … The men hung on every tone as complete silence reigned. As I sang the men began to smile, and emotions began to flood the room. I thought to myself,” They cannot be so bad, when one can awaken these emotions in them.” …’^[14]

Her star burned all too quickly and she passed away in Berlin in 1955, just as the first German edition of her autobiography was being prepared for publication. ^[15]

^[1] HEMPEL, FRIEDA., MY GOLDEN AGE OF SINGING. ANNOTATED BY WILLIAM R MORAN AND WITH A PROLOGUE AND EPILOGUE BY ELIZABETH JOHNSTON. AMADEUS PRESS, PORTLAND (1998) P.13

^[2] SHAWE-TAYLOR, DESMOND., HEMPEL, FREIDA IN THE GROVE BOOK OF OPERA SINGERS EDITED BY MACY, LAURA., OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS (2008) PP.218-219

^[3] IBID. P.27

^[4] IBID. P.97

^[5] IBID.P135

^[6] STEANE, J.B., FRIEDA HEMPEL IN SINGERS OF THE CENTURY VOLUME 3, DUCKWORTH, LONDON (2000)., P.210

^[7] IBID. P.65

^[8] IBID. P.67 and P.84

^[9] IBID. PP.60-61

^[10] IBID. P210

^[11] IBID. P.241

^[12] IBID. P.238

^[13] IBID. P.222

^[14] IBID. P.222

^[15] IBID. P.219