Opera Scotland

Grace Hoffmann Suggest updates

Grace Goldie Hoffmann.

Born Cleveland, Ohio, 14 January 1921.

Died Stuttgart, 26 July 2008.

American mezzo-soprano.

Grace Hoffman moved to Stuttgart in 1955 and lived there for the rest of her life, She was a notable mrmber of the local state opera for over thirty years. It was as a member of that company that she visited Edinburgh in 1958 and 1966.

She studied in Cleveland at Case Western Reserve University, before continuing her studies with Friedrich Schorr in New York and Mario Basiola in Milan. She herself later taught in Stuttgart at the Hochschule für Musik.

She sang frequently at Bayreuth, particularly as Ortrud, Brangäne and Fricka. She also appeared in Munich and gave over three hundred performances at the Vienna State Opera. Her Italian performances were at La Scala and Florence. Her visits to the USA were infrequent, but she did go to San Francisco for Don Carlos in 1958, and that same season sang Brangäne and Marina in Chicago. She only gave a handful of performances at the Met. 

Apart from her visits to Edinburgh as Brangäne and Ortrud, her British performances were at Covent Garden, starting in 1959 as Eboli, and ending in 1971 as Herodias. In between she made particularly memorable appearances as Kundry and Amneris, as well as Brangäne and Fricka.

She made a number of recordings, most famously Herodias in the Solti / Nilsson set of Salome. and Second Norn in Solti's Götterdämmerung. She also recorded a number of concert works such as Das Lied von der Erde and the St Matthew Passion.