Playing My Part

Frida Leider, the greatest Wagnerian soprano of the pre-war period, has a permanent place in operatic history. In this, her own memoirs, Leider recreates the fascinating operatic world of her day, and recounts her association with Bruno Walter, Wilhelm Furtwangler, Lauritz Melchior, Lotte Lehmann, Maria Jeritza, Elisabeth Schumann, Erich Kleiber, as well as many other great musical figures of the twentieth century. Leider’s story embraces her entire career from her childhood in Berlin at the turn of the century, through her apprentice years in the provincial German opera houses, to her years of international triumph when she was acclaimed at Covent Garden, Bayreuth, the Berlin State Opera and the Metropolitan Opera. Her account of musical life in Nazi Germany adds yet another dimension to an autoEdition Biography which, by virtue of its charm and warmth, is already far removed from more conventional operatic memoirs.