cover image Elisabeth (Sic) Schwarzkopf

Elisabeth (Sic) Schwarzkopf

Alan Jefferson. Northeastern University Press, $35 (304pp) ISBN 978-1-55553-272-7

Schwarzkopf, now living in retirement in Switzerland in her 80s, is widely regarded as one of the great sopranos of the century, a specialist in Mozart and Richard Strauss as well as an incomparable lieder singer. The most controversial aspect of her life was, of course, her conduct in Nazi Germany, which continued to be a source of difficulty for her for some years after the war. Without belaboring it, English critic and cultural historian Jefferson leaves the reader in no doubt that Schwarzkopf was a willing Nazi Party member (like Herbert von Karajan, who would later do much to aid her professionally) and also that she probably had friends in very high places; her wartime film career was most likely aided by Goebbels himself. The singer always had a limited number of operatic roles, and it was as a lieder singer that her English husband, the great recording impresario Walter Legge, built her up in during the 1950s through the '70s. Jefferson's book, the first detailed study of the singer in English, is solid but oddly impersonal; but then, it seems that Schwarzkopf was, too. Illustrated, with complete list of performances. Music Book Society main selection.(Aug.)