METZGER (Metzger-Lattermann), OTTILIE

METZGER (Metzger-Lattermann), OTTILIE (1878–1943), contralto. Born in Frankfurt, Metzger was a student of Selma Nicklass-Kempner in Berlin and made her debut at Halle in 1898. She sang and was the leading contralto at the Hamburg Stadttheater (1903–14) and appeared in Wagner operas at Bayreuth, gaining a reputation as a singer of dramatic parts. Her great roles there where Erda and Waltraute in Götterdaemmerung. Between 1916 and 1921 she sang with the Dresden Staatsoper. She toured in Austria, England (at Covent Garden she made her debut in 1902, singing in Wagner's Die Meistersinger, Siegfried, and Tristan), and the United States (1914–15), and appeared with the German Opera Company at the Manhattan Opera House, New York, in 1922–23. She taught in Berlin until the Nazi rise to power, took refuge in Brussels, and was deported to Auschwitz in 1942, where she met her death. -ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Grove online.