Testimonials

This is what Seinemeyer's contemporaries (and later admirers) had to say about her:


Fritz Busch

From his autobiography:

"Meta Seinemeyer, whose early death was much lamented, was not only a superb Leonora [in Verdi's Forza del Destino], she excelled in all roles requiring an emotional, lyric-dramatic ability. In Giordano’s Andrea Chénier she was a most poignant Madeleine. Although the technical finish of her voice, which so closely resembled Elisabeth Rethberg’s, was not the latter’s equal, it nevertheless had an incomparable emotional impact - in fact it was a true “voix de larme”. No tombstone inscription could be more apt than the final words from the German translation of La Forza del Destino: “Die Seele lebt” - the soul lives on."


Umberto Giordano

After seeing Seinemeyer in the role of Maddalena in Andrea Chénier:

"In the whole of Italy there is no such glorious woman's voice as that of Seinemeyer."


Franz Werfel

In a letter to Seinemeyer, after the premiere of his translation of Forza del Destino:

"Miss Seinemeyer, I must tell you that you have accomplished a great feat of singing tonight! Such a warm voice does not exist anymore on the German stage. The line of your singing is perfect. The peace aria ["Pace, pace..."] in your calm and thoroughly beautiful rendition was deeply moving for the entire house. I think Verdi himself would have experienced sheer joy in your singing!"


Herman Klein

Klein, a leading critic for The Gramophone for many years, paid this tribute to Seinemeyer in a review of her recordings of Liszt's "O lieb'" and Rubinstein's "Die Nacht", which were released after her death:

"I need not dwell on the sensations that one experiences on hearing anew the voice of a singer who has just passed on. It is one of those strange phenomena that the gramophone alone can create--an impression far more touching in its realism than any that the camera can convey: for, after all, the sound of the human voice is like the reflection of life itself and therefore as it were, part and parcel of the living being. But enough of that! To listen to the quiet charm the exquisite vocal quality of these records of songs by Liszt and Rubinstein is not only to enjoy music made doubly beautiful by its rendering, but to deplore with a profounder regret the premature passing of a most delightful singer. The sincerity of her work was among her many rare merits and it stands forth plainly for all to hear in these pieces, the orchestral accompaniments to which (never intended or provided by the composers) were, pathetically enough, conducted by the singer's husband of a month, Dr. Frieder Weissmann.


More to come...

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Copyright 2002 Vicki Kondelik.