KÖth, Erika

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KÖth, Erika

KÖth, Erika, German soprano; b. Darmstadt, Sept. 15, 1925; d. Speyer, Feb. 20, 1989. She was a student in Darmstadt of Elsa Bank. In 1947 she won 1st prize in a Hessian Radio competition, and then made her debut as Adele in a Darmstadt radio broadcast. In 1948 she made her stage debut as Philine in Mignon in Kaiserslautern. After singing in Karlsruhe (1950–53), she appeared with the Bavarian State Opera in Munich (from 1953), the Vienna State Opera (from 1953), and in Berlin (from 1961); she also made appearances at the Salzburg (1955–64) and Bayreuth (1965–68) festivals. In 1956 she was named a Bavarian and in 1970 a Berlin Kammersängerin. She taught at the Cologne Hochschule für Musik (from 1973), and then at the Heidelberg-Mannheim Hochschule für Musik (from 1980). Among her esteemed portrayals were Zerbinetta, the Queen of the Night, Susanna, Constanze, Donna Elvira, Lucia, and Sophie.

Bibliography

K. Adam, Herzlichst! E. K. (Darmstadt, 1969).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire