Karin Martensen, Being Isolde: The Theory and Practice of Anna Bahr-Mildenburg

March 2019, Volume 13, Number 1, 38–46.

‘Anna von Mildenburg was the first person through whose artistry Mahler was able to show the great female figures of the music drama in their entire shattering power: Brünnhilde and Isolde, Ortrud and Elisabeth, Fidelio, Gluck’s Clytemnestra and Donna Anna; and also Amneris and Amelia, Milada in Dalibor, Pfitzner’s Minneleide and Santuzza. A woman’s suffering has never been presented, not even by Duse, as prodigiously as by this singer, in whom all the dark forces of tragedy have come alive. There is no greater tragic artist in our time.’

This quotation from the critic Richard Specht tells us that Anna Bahr-Mildenburg (1872–1947) was famous for her ability in characterising female figures on the opera stage. Thanks to her brilliant voice (a highly dramatic soprano), her vocal and personal expressive powers and her dramatic intelligence, she was, in the eyes of Gustav Mahler (to whom she was also bound in a lengthy love affair), the ideal ‘singing tragedian’ who fulfilled his demands for emotional depth in music-dramatic interpretation.