Frida Leider

as Fricka "Die Walkure" Wagner

Frida Leider
1888-1975
German Soprano

Studied singing while working in a bank. Her first engagements led her to opera houses in Halle, Königsberg, and Rostock. After an engagement with the Hamburg State Opera in 1923, she was hired by the Berlin State Opera as first dramatic soprano. After her retirement from the stage in 1946, she remained there as the director and manager of a studio for the rising singers of the Berlin State Opera.

Frida Leider made regular guest appearances for over 15 years at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden in London, at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, at La Scala in Milan, and at the State Operas of Vienna and Munich. Naturally, she also made appearances at the Bayreuth Festival, where she was the unrivaled star soprano of the 1930s. In the 1920s, she alternated Wagnerian roles with Florence Austral at Covent Garden .Leider married the first concert master of the Berlin State Opera, Prof. Rudolf Deman. Her most famous roles were Wagner's Isolde and Brünnhilde, Beethoven's Fidelio, Mozart's Donna Anna, and Verdi's Aida and Leonora.