Education
Born in Sátoraljaújhely, Némethy studied at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, and privately with Ettore Panizza in Milan.
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Ella Nemethy
Edit ProfileCareer
Music historian Péter P. Várnai writes in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians that "she was the leading mezzo-soprano in the interwar years, especially in Wagnerian roles such as Brünnhilde, Isolde and Kundry. She made her professional opera debut in 1919 as Dalila in Camille Saint-Saëns"s Samson et Dalila at the Hungarian State Opera House. She remained a resident artist at that opera house for three decades where she performed a highly varied repertoire.
Including performances of Amneris in Aida, Brünnhilde in Die Walküre, Götterdämmerung, and Siegfried, Eboli in Don Carlos, Leonore in Fidelio, Kundry in Parsifal, Ortrud in Lohengrin, Santuzza in Cavalleria rusticana, and Venus in Tannhäuser among others
Némethy appeared as a guest artist with several major opera houses around the world, including the Berlin State Opera, the Teatro Colón, and leading opera houses in Italy, Spain, and the United States. A major triumph of her career was performances of Brünnhilde in Wagner"s Der Ring des Nibelungen at Louisiana Scala in 1937 and 1938.
She also sang Brünnhilde for her debut at the Liceu in 1932-1933. In May 1938 she performed the role of Judith in the Italian premiere of Béla Bartók"s Bluebeard"s Castle at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.
A 1936 recording of her Judith to Mihály Székely"s Bluebeard was posthumously released on Civil Defense in 2015.
Her performance of Ortrud in Lohengrin is also preserved on a 1948 recording with conductor Otto Klemperer.
Membership
Upon her retirement from the stage in 1948, Némethy was named a lifelong member of the Hungarian State Opera House.
