Early years Welitsch was born in
Borissovo, Bulgaria, and grew up on her family's farm with her two sisters. Her interest in music began as a young girl; when she was eight one of her sisters gave her a violin, and for a while she considered becoming a professional player. In Sofia she sang in choirs, and studied music with Georgi Zlatev-Cherkin. Welitsch made her operatic debut in Sofia in 1936, in a small part in
Louise. She learned her craft with the Graz company over the next three years, singing an unusually wide range of soprano roles, in operas by composers from
Mozart to
Wagner,
Humperdinck,
Puccini and
Richard Strauss. Between then and the end of the
Second World War she was a member of opera companies in
Hamburg (1941–1943),
Munich and
Berlin (1943–1946). Welitsch took Austrian citizenship in 1946.
David Webster, the director of the Royal Opera House, recognising Welitsch's talent, secured her services for the resident company, with whom she appeared between 1948 and 1953 in
Aida,
La bohème,
Salome,
Tosca and
The Queen of Spades. In London, as in Vienna, operas were then customarily performed in the local language, and Welitsch, like other German singers performing at Covent Garden, had to learn her roles in English. As Musetta in
La bohème, according to
The Times, "she more often than not sang whoever was playing Mimì off the stage", When Welitsch sang Donna Anna for the
Glyndebourne Festival Opera at the
Edinburgh Festival in 1948, the critic
Frank Howes wrote that she was a tiger who could have eaten both Don Giovanni and Don Ottavio "and still have called for more". In the same year she sang in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with the
Vienna Philharmonic conducted by
Wilhelm Furtwängler at the
Royal Albert Hall. In 1949 for Glyndebourne at Edinburgh she sang Amelia in
Un ballo in maschera. '' Also in 1949 Welitsch made her debut at the
Metropolitan Opera, New York, in
Salome; it was given in a double bill with
Puccini's
Gianni Schicchi, in which she did not appear. Comparing her with her predecessors as Salome, the critic
Irving Kolodin wrote, "those who were better looking could not match Miss Welitsch's vocal performance, for euphony, clarity and meaning, and those who were comparable singers had no such physical identity with the role. Q.E.D. Miss Welitsch is the Metropolitan's Salome of record."
Variety reported the praise of Welitsch's singing and acting, but concentrated more on her performance of Salome's
dance of the seven veils: "Miss Welitsch really went to town, putting on a shimmy dance that makes
52nd Street swing
coryphées look pale in comparison, and that had the Met audience gasping." The historian Kenneth Morgan writes: At the Metropolitan Opera, Welitsch sang the roles with which she was associated in London, and added Rosalinde in
Die Fledermaus. Welitsch's international career was mainly centred on Vienna, London and New York, although she remained loyal to Graz and made guest appearances there. She was twice invited to perform at
La Scala, Milan, but her commitments were already too many to allow her to accept.
Later years By 1953 Welitsch had developed
nodules on her vocal cords, necessitating surgery. That, compounded by her unusually high number of performances, led to a swift deterioration in her singing, and she was obliged to give up the star roles for which she was most celebrated. She had expected a longer career, and had been contemplating taking on the role of
Isolde in a few years' time, although she was not enamoured of Wagner in general. The critic Tim Ashley writes that Welitsch's farewell to Salome came on film in
Carol Reed's 1955 thriller
The Man Between, in a scene set in the Berlin State Opera during a performance of the opera. "You only see her in long shot, though it's enough to get an idea of what she was like on stage." Welitsch was still able to sing roles such as Magda in Puccini's
La rondine in Vienna in 1955, and to record the character part of Marianne, the
duenna, in
Herbert von Karajan's 1956 set of
Der Rosenkavalier. She successfully turned to the non-operatic stage, in parts such as June in a German translation of
The Killing of Sister George in Berlin in 1970. Long after her retirement Welitsch continued to be regarded by professionals with admiration and affection. The
Decca producer
John Culshaw wrote in 1967 that she was a welcome guest at recording sessions, and "one of our regular jobs is to bring kippers to Vienna for Welitsch". Her hospitality was famous, and she remained the focus of public attention even in retirement, as a member of first-night audiences. Welitsch was twice married and twice divorced; she had no children. She died in Vienna after a series of strokes, aged 83. ==Critical assessment==