Anna Gottlieb
Encyclopedia
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
. She was the first Pamina in Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
's opera The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute is an opera in two acts composed in 1791 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a Singspiel, a popular form that included both singing and spoken dialogue....
.
She was born in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, one of four sisters. Her parents were actors, who worked in the German theatre company of the Nationaltheater, and all four sisters were raised to the family trade, working as actresses as children. Anna first acted at the Burgtheater
Burgtheater
The Burgtheater , originally known as K.K. Theater an der Burg, then until 1918 as the K.K. Hofburgtheater, is the Austrian National Theatre in Vienna and one of the most important German language theatres in the world.The Burgtheater was created in 1741 and has become known as "die Burg" by the...
at age five. Shortly after she turned 12 (May 1, 1786), she premiered the role of Barbarina in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro
The Marriage of Figaro
Le nozze di Figaro, ossia la folle giornata , K. 492, is an opera buffa composed in 1786 in four acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, based on a stage comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais, La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro .Although the play by...
. At fifteen, she appeared in the role of Amande in Paul Wranitzky
Paul Wranitzky
Pavel Vranický was a Moravian classical composer. His brother, Antonín, was also a composer.-Life:...
's Opera Oberon, König der Elfen ("Oberon, King of the Elves"). This production featured in the leading role the soprano Josepha Hofer, who was Mozart's sister-in-law and later premiered the role of the Queen of the Night in Mozart's The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute is an opera in two acts composed in 1791 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a Singspiel, a popular form that included both singing and spoken dialogue....
.
When in 1789 the actor and impresario Emanuel Schikaneder
Emanuel Schikaneder
Emanuel Schikaneder , born Johann Joseph Schickeneder, was a German impresario, dramatist, actor, singer and composer. He was the librettist of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera The Magic Flute and the builder of the Theater an der Wien...
brought his troupe to be the resident company at the Theater auf der Wieden
Theater auf der Wieden
The Theater auf der Wieden, also called the Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden or the Wiednertheater, was a theater located in the then-suburban Wieden district of Vienna in the late 18th century...
in Vienna, Gottlieb became a soprano in the company, singing in various Singspiel
Singspiel
A Singspiel is a form of German-language music drama, now regarded as a genre of opera...
e. When Mozart composed The Magic Flute for the Schikaneder company, he chose Gottlieb, aged seventeen, for the leading role of Pamina, the pinnacle of her career.
In 1792 Gottlieb moved to the Theater in der Leopoldstadt
Theater in der Leopoldstadt
The Theater in der Leopoldstadt was an opera house in Vienna, founded in 1781 by Karl von Marinelli, following the Schauspielfreiheit by Joseph II in 1776...
, where, during the years 1803–17 under the direction of Carl Friedrich Hensler, she was "mainstay of the company" (New Grove). She appeared in a number of parody works, and was admired for her ability to lampoon operatic sopranos, having had direct experience in this area herself. Her greatest success at the Leopoldstadt Theater was in the role of Hulda in Ferdinand Kauer
Ferdinand Kauer
Ferdinand August Kauer , was an Austrian composer and pianist.-Biography:Kauer was born in Klein-Thaya near Znaim in South Moravia. He studied in Znaim, Tyrnau, and Vienna, and later settled in Vienna around 1777. In 1781 he joined Karl von Marinelli's newly formed company at Vienna as leader and...
's play Das Donauweibchen (1798). Her career was interrupted between 1809 and 1813 owing to the Napoleonic wars
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
, and when she returned to the stage her voice had declined. As she aged, she gradually changed roles, eventually becoming a character singer playing roles of old women.
In 1828 a new director, Rudolf Steinkeller, took over the Leopoldstadt Theater, and the declining singer was dismissed. She had no pension from her former employer and sank into poverty, appealing in vain from time to time for the Emperor to give her a pension. In 1842 she contacted a newspaper editor, L. V. Frankl, introducing herself as "the first Pamina"; Frankl undertook a fundraising campaign that enabled Gottlieb to visit Salzburg for the unveiling of a monument to Mozart. She was the last singer alive in Vienna who had known Mozart..
The aging Gottlieb was mocked, much later, in the 1896 memoirs of Wilhelm Kuhe
Wilhelm Kuhe
Wilhelm Kuhe was a German pianist, pianoforte player and teacher, composer and administrator born in the city of Prague , in the first half of the nineteenth-century.-Life:...
:
- "[at the 1842 Mozart commemoration] there entered a very tall, thin and eccentric-looking woman who at once exclaimed as though addressing an audience, 'I am the first Pamina' ... she seemed to think that she had at least an equal claim with Mozart to be an object of universal veneration".
Gottlieb, who never married, died in Vienna at 82 and was buried on February 6, 1856 in the same cemetery as Mozart, the St. Marx cemetery
St. Marx cemetery
St. Marx Cemetery is a cemetery in the Landstraße district of Vienna, used from 1784 until 1874. It was named after a nearby almshouse.-History:...
in Vienna.