Fritzi Massary was an Austrian-American actress and soprano

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...

 singer.

Born as Friederike Massaryk, she was one of the leading operetta

Operetta

Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...

 singers in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 and 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...

. By 1912 her fame was such that one spoke simply of "die Massary (the Massary)". She was a premier Diva

Diva

A diva is a celebrated female singer. The term is used to describe a woman of outstanding talent in the world of opera, and, by extension, in theatre, cinema and popular music. The meaning of diva is closely related to that of "prima donna"....

 of her generation. She was closely associated with Oscar Straus

Oscar Straus (composer)

Oscar Nathan Straus was a Viennese composer of operettas and film scores and songs. He also wrote about 500 cabaret songs, chamber music, and orchestral and choral works...

, creating roles in six of his operettas, notably Der letzte Walzer in 1920.

Despite her 1903 conversion to Protestantism, Massary fled Germany in late 1932 because of her Jewish heritage. She traveled through Austria and Switzerland to London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, where she was befriended by Sir Noel Coward

Noël Coward

Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...

 and starred in his Operette in 1938. Shortly thereafter, in February 1939, she moved to Beverly Hills, California

Beverly Hills, California

Beverly Hills is an affluent city located in Los Angeles County, California, United States. With a population of 34,109 at the 2010 census, up from 33,784 as of the 2000 census, it is home to numerous Hollywood celebrities. Beverly Hills and the neighboring city of West Hollywood are together...

, where she lived until her death in 1969. Beginning in 1952, she regularly spent summers in Germany.

Massary was married twice, first to an eye doctor Bernhard Pollack, whom she later refused to discuss or even mention. With Karl-Kuno Rollo Graf von Coudenhove (1887 - 1940), she had her only child, Elisabeth Maria Karl (called Liesl) (1903-1979). Liesl later married the author Bruno Frank

Bruno Frank

Bruno Frank was a German author, poet, dramatist, and humanist.Frank studied law and philosophy in Munich, where he later worked as a dramatist and novelist until the Reichstag fire in 1933...

. Though Coudenhove was Liesl's father, Massary was never married to him. In fact, Coudenhove's family was nobility and threatened him with a mental institution to dissuade him from marrying an actress.

Massary's second marriage, in 1917, was to the Austrian actor Max Pallenberg

Max Pallenberg

Max Pallenberg was an Austrian singer, actor and comedian.Although Pallenberg's career started in 1904 it wasn't until 1909 that he joined Theater an der Wien and Vienna's Deutsches Volkstheater. However, it was at Berlin's Deutsches Theater where he left a lasting mark on German theatrical...

 (1877 - 1934), who died in a plane crash in Karlsbad in 1934.

External links

• Photographs and literature
• Carola Stern: Die Sache, die man Liebe nennt. Das Leben der Fritzi Massary. Rowohlt
  Rowohlt
  Rowohlt Verlag is a publishing house based in Reinbek and also Hamburg and Berlin, part of the Georg von Holtzbrinck Group . The company was created in 1908 in Leipzig by Ernst Rowohlt.- Parts of the company :* Kindler Verlag...
  
  , Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-87134-359-5.