- Besides her performances at operas Selma Kurz-Halban also impersonated roles in numerous operettas and she went on several tours through Europe.
- The singer and actress Selma Kurz-Halban already appeared as a singer at a young age and she made first experiences as a chorister.
- After a singing study by Johannes Ress in Vienna and Mathilde Marchesi in Paris she began her professional career as a singer in Hamburg in 1895.
- Because of her popularity as a singer she appeared in two movies. Her first one was the opera recording of "La Traviata" (1909) and her second movie was "Johann Strauss an der schönen blauen Donau" (1913) directed by and with Karl Zeska, Hansi Niese, Mizzi Günther and Louise Kartousch.
- She was regularly engaged as an opera singer and she appeared at operas in Frankfurt and Vienna. No less than the composer Gustav Mahler engaged her at the Hofopera in Vienna in 1899 where she remained active for several decades.
- While still a girl she was taken to a convent of nuns, with the hope that she might learn to be a seamstress; the nuns quickly discovered the beauty of her voice, however, and she also often sang in the local synagogue. These circumstances led local people to raise some money so that she could go to Vienna and audition for professor Gänsbacher, a prominent vocal teacher. Gänsbacher did not teach women, but wrote some important letters of recommendation. Little Selma was thus enabled to visit the imposing Schloss Totis, the Viennese residence, en villéggiature, of the famous patron of the arts, count Nicholas (Miklós) Esterhazy de Galántha, who agreed to pay for her lessons with another prominent vocal pedagogue, Johannes Ress.
- She was first heard in Vienna at a student concert of Ress pupils on March 22, 1895. She got good notices and offers poured from many opera houses, especially the ones in provincial Germany, which were always looking for new talent.
- Her success in Vienna was swift and total, and lasted to the end of her musical career, thirty years later. Mahler himself, hearing her perfect trill and wonderfully placed high-notes in Leonora's Act IV aria in Il trovatore, suggested that she ought to study the Hochkoloratur repertory, in which she would become the Hofoper's prima donna assoluta. The Court Opera director carefully introduced her to this repertoire by letting her sing Rosina (in The Barber of Seville), the pages Urbain in Les Huguenots and Oscar in Un ballo in maschera, Juliette and Martha; but she soon moved on to Elvira in Ernani, Lakmé, Konstanze, Gilda, Violetta (in La traviata) and, last but not least, Lucia di Lammermoor.
- Gustav Mahler, music director of the Vienna Imperial and Royal Court Opera, heard Kurz in Frankfurt towards the end of 1898 and asked her to audition for him. He immediately offered her a contract and she made her debut at the theatre that would become her artistic and spiritual home, also as Mignon, on September 3, 1899.
- Once her career was established, Selma Kurz consulted such world-renowned voice teachers as Jean de Reszke in Nice and Mathilde Marchesi in Paris, as well as the soprano Felicie Kaschowska, well known in Vienna; but she always called herself, above all, a pupil of Ress.
- She made her debut in the title-role of Ambroise Thomas's opera Mignon, at the Stadttheater, Hamburg, on May 12, 1895. She appeared there and at Frankfurt am Main for the next four seasons, singing all manner of roles, including Eudoxie in Halévy's La Juive, Elisabeth in Wagner's Tannhäuser and Bizet's Carmen.
- She could make the public go mad with her long trills. People even came with stopwatches to determine that it was 'even one second longer than yesterday'. In a 1907 recording of Taubert's Der Vogel im Walde the trill lasts 24 seconds.
- Selma Kurz was born in Biala, the poorer of two adjoining Austrian towns (the other was Bielitz), to a very humble Jewish family of eleven children. She grew up in Bielitz. (Today they are a single city known as Bielsko-Biala, in the Polish province of Silesia).
- Selma Kurz was many times invited to appear in the United States and received several tempting offers from the Metropolitan Opera in New York. None of these managed to induce her so far from Vienna and her family. It was only in 1921 that she finally sailed for the New World, appearing one single time in concert at the New York Hippodrome. This was supposed to be the first concert of a long tour, but she immediately took ill (she had possibly had a heart attack) and the tour was cancelled. She immediately returned to Vienna, where she had a long convalescence before she could return to performing with a voice that, all agreed, was never quite the same.
- In London she was first heard in May 1904 in Rigoletto, with Enrico Caruso and Maurice Renaud. She then sang her famous page, Oscar, in Un ballo in maschera, with Giannina Russ, Caruso, Antonio Scotti and Marcel Journet.
The following year she again sang A Masked Ball with Caruso and Mario Sammarco as well as her other favourite page role, Urbain in Les Huguenots, opposite Emmy Destinn, Caruso, Scotti, Journet and Clarence Whitehill. She also appeared in Gounod's Roméo et Juliette opposite Charles Dalmorès' Romeo. She also repeated, in these two seasons of coloratura successes, her Elisabeth in Tannhäuser, with Karel Burian in the title role. - Form the outset Selma Kurz was widely required all over Europe and she appeared successfully in both opera and concert at the Grand Opéra in Paris, the Princely Opéra in Monte Carlo, Rome, Salzburg, Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, Amsterdam, Ostend, Bucharest and Cairo.
- Her last performance at the great theatre in the Ringstraße, where so many of her triumphs had been acclaimed by two generations of opera lovers from all over Europe and the world, took place on February 12, 1927. This appearance, as Rosina in The Barber of Seville, closed one of the most glorious operatic careers in the twentieth century.
- Selma Kurz left over 150 78-rpm recordings. The first were made for Emile Berliner in 1900. These were followed by Zonophone and Gramophone & Typewriter Company discs, dating from 1901-1906. She then made a long series for HMV (now EMI) in 1907-1914. These are by far the best of her recordings, capturing the attractiveness of her tone and the exceptional agility of her vocal technique. In 1924-25 she again recorded for HMV, which even made a number of electrical recordings of her singing, including a remarkable version of the "Siren Call" from The Queen of Sheba, complete with her trademark trill.
- In 1910, Selma Kurz married the noted gynecologist, Professor Dr Joseph Halban (1876-1937), a professor at Vienna University, who later was knighted by the Austrian Emperor, becoming Ritter Joseph von Halban. With him she had two children, Désirée (1912-1996) and Georg (1915-1998). "Dési" Halban became a concert soprano who, among other things, recorded Mahler's Fourth Symphony with Bruno Walter. Notwithstanding her always delicate heath, Selma von Halban-Kurz had a notably happy family life in her palatial Vienna home until, in 1929, she became ill with cancer. After a battle with this disease, she died on May 10, 1933, in Vienna.
- Mahler fell in love with Selma, and they had a short affair during the spring of 1900. However, the Court Opera did not allow their members to marry among themselves, and Selma decided to choose for her career.
- Her very last public appearance occurred in September 1932 at the baptism of Archduke Stefan (1932-1998), son of Archduke Anton and Princess Ileana of Romania. Although already mortally ill, the Imperial and Royal Kammersängerin sang Mozart's Ridente la calma and the Bach-Gounod Ave Maria as a gesture to the baby's grandmother, Queen Marie of Rumania, who had long been a close personal friend. Selma Kurz died nine months later.
- Although she had great triumphs in coloratura roles, Kurz did not neglect her lyric repertory. Indeed, of the 992 performances she would give at the Vienna Hofoper (later Staatsoper), more than 100 would be devoted to Mimì in Puccini's La bohème. She also created that composer's Madama Butterfly for Vienna (1907) as well as Saffi in Johann Strauss's Der Zigeunerbaron (1910).
- It was Kurz's legendary singing in Mahler's 1903 revival of Un ballo in maschera as well as in Goldmark's The Queen of Sheba, that cemented her immense popularity with the Viennese public. (As Astaroth in The Queen of Sheba, perhaps her most famous role, she held audiences spellbound with her vocalization of the so-called Lockruf or 'Siren Call.') It also led to her being elevated to the position of Kaiserliche und Königliche Kammersängerin ('Imperial and Royal Court Singer') at the age of 29. She was often thereafter in attendance of Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria, always a devoted admirer of her art.
- Selma Kurz was an Austrian operatic soprano known for her brilliant coloratura technique.
- It was the municipal authorities that insisted that the great Imperial and Royal Kammersängerin be buried in a lovely spot at the Zentralfriedhof, the Central Cemetery where Vienna's great sons and daughters are interred. There she lies, not far from Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms.
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