Georgine von Milinkovič

Georgine von Milinkovič was a Croatian mezzo-soprano who studied in Zagreb and Vienna and first appeared at the Zagreb Opera in 1933, as the Third Boy in Die Zauberflöte; in 1935 she sang Erda there in the first Zagreb Das Rheingold. She sang at the Zurich Opera from 1937 to 1940, then joined the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, and was heard as Kundry in a 1941 Dutch radio broadcast of Parsifal from Hilversum before singing in Prague from 1945 to 1948. She returned to Munich in 1948 and made her Vienna State Opera debut that year, and the greater part of her career took place at those two houses. She created Alkmene in the premiere of Strauss's Die Liebe der Danae at the 1952 Salzburg Festival. She sang regularly at the Bayreuth Festival from 1954, taking Wagner roles including Fricka, Magdalene and Grimgerde, and also appeared at the Edinburgh and Holland festivals and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in a repertoire that also ran to Carmen, Amneris and Eboli.