The soprano was born on August 4, 1889, in the Silesian town of Brieg (present-day Brzeg) to Jewish parents, Emanuel and Sally Land (born Milch). She debuted in 1912 at the theater in Moravian Ostrava before moving to the theater in Kiel in 1913 and the Vienna Volksoper in 1915. In 1919, she moved to the Hamburg Stadttheater, where she had already undertaken guest engagements in 1914 and 1918. There, her roles included Amelia in Giuseppe Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera and Leonore in Il trovatore, as well as Venus in Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser. In Hamburg, she also met the music director Werner Wolff, who was likewise engaged at the Stadttheater and whom she married in 1923.
Emmy Land remained a part of the ensemble until summer of 1932, when she was dismissed together with her husband, who as a Jew was a frequent target of the local National Socialist press and ultimately lost his position under pressure from right-wing parties. In 1936, the two moved to Berlin and from there went into exile. Following her husband, who had already left in October, Emmy Land departed from Le Havre, France, for the United States, where her daughter was already living. There, the singer arrived on the Manhattan steamship on January 26, 1939.
Shortly thereafter, Emmy Land and Werner Wolff moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where they taught at the local university and the renowned Cadek Conservatory. They opened Tennessee’s first opera school in 1943, laying the foundation for the city’s current opera house. Emmy Land died on November 26, 1955, in Chattanooga.
1889 Brzeg
1955 Chattanooga, Tennessee