Inge Borkh

Inge Borkh ( born May 26, 1921 in Mannheim ) is a German soprano.

Life and work

Inge Borkh was born under the name Ingeborg Simon. She grew up in a musical home and started her career as an actress. During her training, she also got lessons in dance.

She studied singing in Milan and made ​​her debut in 1940 at the Lucerne Opera as Czipra in The Gypsy Baron by Johann Strauss. She sang in Switzerland until 1951, including the Magda in the first German performance of Gian Carlo Menotti's opera The Consul in Basel. This was their breakthrough to international success followed with engagements in the opera houses of Vienna, Munich, Berlin, London, New York and San Francisco.

In 1952 she sang at the Bayreuth Festival, the Freia and Sieglinde in The Ring of the Nibelung. In 1957 she took over at the Salzburg Festival in the title role of Elektra by Richard Strauss.

Inge Borkh adopted relatively early from the opera stage in 1973, she finished in Italy their Opernkarierre after seven performances in the title role of the opera Elektra by Richard Strauss. Then they came for a short time back to the stage as an actress for the spoken theater. She played in Hamburg in 1977, the Volumnia in Coriolanus by William Shakespeare as a partner of Boy Gobert.

She went after her farewell to the operatic stage even as a cabaret artist with solo evenings. During this time, a record recording sung their memoirs under the title was: "Inge Borkh sings her memoirs ".

Repertoire

She sang mainly in dramatic roles: Aida and Lady Macbeth by Giuseppe Verdi, Tosca and Turandot by Giacomo Puccini, Leonore in Fidelio by Ludwig van Beethoven, Medea in the eponymous opera by Luigi Cherubini, Elsa, Sieglinde and Senta in the music dramas of Richard Wagner, Elektra, Salome, Egyptian Helena, Empress and dyer wife of Richard Strauss. In the field of Modern she took over Antigone in the opera by Carl Orff.

The passed on through radio broadcasts, live recordings and record musical oeuvre of Inge Borkh including Antigone, Turandot, Clytemnestra in Iphigenia in Aulis by Christoph Willibald Gluck, Elektra and Salome was re-released in recent years also on CD.

Personal

She was married to the Yugoslav bass-baritone Alexander Welitsch ( 1906-1991 ).