Erna Sack

Erna Sack, "The German Nightingale" was born in Berlin in 1898 and was still a child when her voice attracted attention both at school and in the church choir in which she sang. For her parents, however, there could be no question of her training to become a singer. It was only when her fiancé, Hermann Sack, whom she married in 1921, interceded on her behalf that her parents changed their minds. Accordingly, she moved to Prague to study with her first teacher. Erna Jack finally joined the ranks of Germany's leading coloratura sopranos. By 1934 she was singing mostly at the Dresden State Opera, where she attracted the attention of Karl Böhm and, above all, Richard Strauss. Her first concert tours were to Austria, Holland, France and England (Covent Garden in 1936) and she had a contract with Telefunken Records. In 1937 she played at the State Opera House in Vienna. She also went to Rome, where she sang in Mozart's "Die Zauberflöte" with Tito Schipa. After that, she went to Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo and for the first time to the USA at Carnegie Hall with Richard Tauber and Josef Schmidt. She also sang in Italian at Chicago's Lyric Opera. During the war, Erna Sack's career was limited almost exclusively to Germany and her allies. After the war, her career was slow to restart in Latin America, especially Brazil, Argentina, Urugay and Chile. By that time, she was a Brazilian citizen because of her husband. But it was in Canada that she enjoyed her greatest successes at this time, and for a number of years the couple lived in Montreal. In 1954 she moved on to Carnegie Hall and then ended up in Germany with the brief tour of German Democratic Republic in 1957. She also made two appearances on TV in the mid 60s and two Movies Blumen aus Nizza (1936) and Nanon (1938).