current projects

WORK IN PROGRESS:

Her Master's Voice: Elisabeth Schwarzkopf
(working title)

A film by Wunderlich Medien

Production:          2011
Written by:           Thomas Voigt, Barbara Wunderlich
Directed by:          Wolfgang Wunderlich, Thomas Voigt
Produced by:        Barbara Wunderlich
Running time:      59:00 min.

“I find it insolent when critics tell artists how to perform something.
I don’t go into the cockpit and tell the pilot how to fly the plane.”

Elisabeth Schwarzkopf

Her contemporaries called her the Marlene Dietrich of grand opera. The most significant soprano was glib, proud and arrogant. Apart from Callas, no operatic diva polarized people as much as Schwarzkopf: you either loved her, or you hated her, she was boundlessly admired and mercilessly vilified.

Her life, set against the tensions between her husband (EMI tycoon Walter Legge) and star conductor Herbert von Karajan was a field day for the press. Both of them gave orders – she obeyed. How does this fit in with the image of this proud lady?

The private Legge/Schwarzkopf archives, unpublished to this day, reveal new answers to some delicate questions. Wunderlich Medien has exclusive access to this huge treasure trove of unique documents, which eliminate a number of prejudices and half truths.

The film “Her Master’s Voice” compares hackneyed cliché images with previously unknown facts and newly acquired information – and comes closer to the ambivalent personality of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf than ever before.

Interviewees

Christa Ludwig, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Julia Varady, Mathias Goerne, Anja Harteros,
Klaus Geitel et.al.