Some opera lovers will not listen to singers who chose to remain and perform in Germany during the Third Reich and World War II, assuming they were all Nazis, sympathizers, and/or antisemites. This is unfortunate, since that assumption is not true in many cases. In other instances, insufficient or no information is available. Such is the situation with the great dramatic contralto/mezzo-soprano Margarete Klose.
After her debut in a Kálmán operetta in 1926, Klose next sang Azucena in Verdi’s Il Trovatore.
She joined the Mannheim National Theater in 1929 and was associated with the Berlin State Opera from 1932 to 1949, and again from 1955 to 1961.
Klose’s magisterial contralto/mezzo soprano made her an ideal performer in the dramatic works of Wagner and Strauss, and she performed at the Bayreuth Festival every summer from 1936 to 1942. Here she sings Ortrud’s great scene in Wagner’s Lohengrin, “Entweihte Götter,” with Maud Cunitz as her Elsa (1953), rising into dramatic soprano territory to high B-flat.
Klose’s voice was large, noble, and opulent with a deep, rich lower register and an upper register of penetrating power. However, she was willing to sacrifice that opulence for dramatic effect and characterization, as in her famous portrayal of Klytemnestra in Strauss’ Elektra, where the thick orchestration presented no obstacles. Here she is in Klytemnestra’s confrontation scene with Elektra, with Inge Borkh (1953):
In 1961, Klose retired from the stage and turned to teaching until her sudden death in 1968 at age 66.