Ljuba Welitsch

Ljuba Welitsch was born in Borissovo, Bulgaria, in July 1913 and studied at the Sofia Conservatory and (after winning a scholarship in 1935) at the Vienna Music Academy under Theo Lierhammer. She made her début at the Sofia National Opera in 1936 and joined the Hamburg State Opera in 1941, the Munich Bavarian State Opera in 1943, and the Vienna State Opera in 1946.

Her international career was concentrated in a brief and intense decade. Her central role was Salome in Strauss’s opera — a part for which her unusual vocal weight, her ability to sustain the extreme tessitura, and her dramatic projection made her the reference interpreter of the post-war years. Her 1944 Salome at the Vienna State Opera under Karl Böhm and her 1949 Salome at the Metropolitan Opera (her début) under Fritz Reiner became central documents of post-war Strauss interpretation. Her wider repertoire included the title role in *Tosca*, Aida, Donna Anna, Musetta in *La bohème*, the title role in *Madama Butterfly*, and Strauss’s Marschallin. Her brief, brilliant top end deteriorated rapidly across the 1950s, and her serious operatic career was effectively over by 1955.

Welitsch turned to operetta, character roles and film in her later career, including appearances in Carol Reed’s *The Third Man*. She died in Vienna in September 1996. Music Preserved’s archive includes a range of her Strauss and Italian operatic work from the late 1940s.