Pilarczyk, Helga (Käthe)
Pilarczyk, Helga (Käthe)
Pilarczyk, Helga (Käthe), German soprano; b. Schöningen, March 12, 1925. She studied piano and aspired to a concert career, then took voice lessons and sang in operetta. She found her true vocation in opera, and made her debut at Braunschweig in 1951; was a member of the Hamburg State Opera from 1953 until 1968. She made a specialty of modern music, and sang Schoenberg’s dramatic monologue Erwartung, and the leading parts in Berg’s Wozzeck and Lulu as well as in works by Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Dallapiccola, Honegger, Krenek, and others. She appeared as a guest artist at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the Vienna State Opera, La Scala in Milan, the Paris Opéra, Covent Garden in London, and the Metropolitan Opera in N.Y. (debut, Feb. 19,1965, as Marie in Wozzeck). She publ. an interesting essay, Kann man die moderne Oper singen? (Hamburg, 1964).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire