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One of the great singer-actresses,
the so-called Diva of the Third Reich,
Zarah Leander’s life seems indivisible
from her smoky music making. If Dietrich
remains the ultimate emblem of a Weimar
that actively shunned its home country
then Leander’s rivals Greta Keller and
Lale Andersen were to prove powerful
contenders to the mythic domestic crown.
But Leander still strikes a visceral
chord not least for recent revelations
and contentions surrounding her actual
role as the Nazi’s favourite film actress.
Leander was Swedish
and the fact that she apparently had
Jewish grandparents makes her ascent
all the more astonishing. A film and
singing career was strongly supported
by the party, despite some high ranking
opposition and the fact that she wasn’t
German born, although if recent newspaper
reports are true she led a covert life
helping Jews and dissidents. Whatever
the truth we can enjoy these examples
of her early fame - which she reached
via assiduous work in Stockholm and
Vienna – the very earliest of which,
the Lehárs made for Odeon in
1931, predate the ascendancy of National
Socialism. They show what a vibrant
and characterful singer-actress she
was even then (not least because her
German was a second language) and how
confidently she bridged the operetta-film
music divide. Her Benatzky is even more
impressive, because it’s more her natural
milieu and the range sits comfortably
for her voice. We can hear the cigarette
stained deep insinuation of Gebundene
Hände and the Dietrich-like
quality of her voice in Eine Frau
von heut’ – although Leander’s voice
is rather more flexible across the range.
She relishes the Magyar exoticisms of
von Buday’s Ich hab’ vielleicht noch
nie geliebt! along with the solo
violinist and brings an obvious sexual
charge and insinuation to most of these
pieces. Some of the orchestrations are
rather showy in their big dance band
ways with spiced instrumentation and
Spanishry in Lothar Brühne’s Der
Wind hat mir ein Lied erzählt.
Her conversational
intimacy is best illustrated on the
same composer’s Du kannst es
nicht wissen – with piano accompaniment
presumably by the composer himself.
And the "mike voice" – light,
with its admixture of popular sprachgesang
– is heard to best advantage in Fenyes’
Sag’ mir nicht Adieu, Sag nur Auf
Wiederseh’n. Here and throughout
she reminds one yet again of her mobility
and rightness in this repertoire, truly
a voice that summons up a decade.
Jonathan Woolf