Selma Kurz
Birthplace: Bielitz, Austrian Silesia, Austria-Hungary (now Bielsko-Biała, Poland)
Selma Kurz was an Austrian soprano who studied with Johannes Ress in Vienna and made her stage debut at Hamburg in 1895 as Mignon. Gustav Mahler heard her in Frankfurt and engaged her for the Vienna Court Opera, where she sang the same role in 1899 and became the house's prima donna assoluta for three decades. Famous above all in the coloratura repertory, as Verdi's Gilda and Oscar, she was gifted with an unusually long and pure shake, which she displayed in an inserted cadenza to Oscar's 'Saper vorreste'. In 1916 she became the first Zerbinetta in the revised Ariadne auf Naxos, and dazzled Covent Garden audiences between 1904 and 1907 and again in 1924.
Creations
- Zerbinetta — Ariadne auf Naxos (Vienna, 1916)
Written from
- Wikipedia (2026) Selma Kurz. (Accessed: August 2026).
- Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon 1815-1950 (n.d.) Kurz, Selma; verehel. von Halban. (Accessed: August 2026). Names her birthplace as Bielitz, against Wikipedia's own hedge toward the Galician half of the twin town; used here since ÖBL and Grove agree.
- Shawe-Taylor, D. (1992) 'Kurz, Selma', in Sadie, S. (ed.) The New Grove Dictionary of Opera. London: Macmillan Reference, vol. 2, p. 1064.