Verstummte Stimmen

Born Maria Ranzenberg in Vienna, she studied under prominent teachers including Mattia Battistini, Luise Reuss-Belce, and Jean de Reszke. Contrary to earlier assumptions, she did not debut in 1912 in Vienna but rather as early as November 18, 1908, at the Metropolitan Opera in New York under the pseudonym Mary Randa, appearing as Rossweiße in Die Walküre. She remained active in New York and later gave guest performances in Philadelphia and Chicago. From the very beginning of her career, Ranzow focused on Wagner roles but also sang smaller solo roles in operas like Falstaff and Tosca.

In 1911 she toured Australia and New Zealand with the Nellie Melba Opera Company. She returned to Vienna in 1912 and joined the Hofhoper, where in 1914 she created the role of Kundry in Parsifal. This would become her signature role. In the following years, Ranzenberg appeared as a guest at the Vienna Volksoper, the Braunschweig Hoftheater, and the Semperoper in Dresden before accepting a permanent engagement at the Hoftheater in Dessau in 1917. During this period, she expanded her repertoire to include additional Wagner roles such as Senta, Elisabeth, Isolde, and Brünnhilde.

In 1925, she was invited to the Bayreuth Festival for the first time, with further appearances following in 1927 and 1928. Although she was closely associated with the Wagner circle, she criticized, prior to her Bayreuth debut, the Pan-German League’s anti-Semitic promotion of the festival, which was to be financed through patronage certificates from which Jews were excluded. Siegfried Wagner publicly distanced himself from this practice and denied any knowledge of it.

In 1930, Maria Ranzow returned to the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where she continued to enjoy success as a Wagner interpreter. After retiring from the stage, she became a respected music teacher in Stuttgart and later moved back to Vienna. Following the annexation of Austria, she left her native city in 1938, likely for political reasons, and emigrated to the United States, where she continued working as a voice teacher. Maria Ranzow died on November 4, 1953, in New York.

When the National Socialists came into power in 1933, it set off an unprecedented wave of expulsions from German opera and theater stages: For countless singers, actors, musicians, and members of the technical and stage staff, this meant the end of their careers. “Silenced Voices” makes the fates of those persecuted for “racial” or political reasons visible and audible.

An interactive map traces their life journeys: from major stages to the places of exclusion, exile, or murder. This creates a powerful connection between the past and the present: The biographies of those persecuted are narrated by ensemble members from some of Germany’s most important theaters, both past and present—the Hamburgische Staatsoper, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin, the Semperoper, the Staatsschauspiel Dresden, and the Staatstheater Stuttgart.

The portal thus serves simultaneously as a tool for scientific research, a digital space for remembrance, and a resource for exploring local history.