Luise Helletsgruber

Luise Helletsgruber was an Austrian soprano who studied in Vienna and made her debut there in 1922 as the Shepherd Boy in Tannhäuser at the Vienna State Opera, where she sang regularly for the next twenty years, creating a Servant in the revised Die ägyptische Helena at Salzburg in 1933. Her lyrical voice and charming stage presence suited roles such as Marguerite and Micaëla in French opera, Eva and Elsa in Wagner, and Liù in Turandot, but she specialised above all in Mozart, appearing at the Salzburg Festival from 1926 to 1938 and at Glyndebourne from 1934 to 1938, where she sang Cherubino, Dorabella and Elvira (all three preserved in the Glyndebourne casts' complete recordings under Fritz Busch) alongside the First Lady in Die Zauberflöte.