31 January 2025
P.R. Jenkins
Karajan artists: Wilma Lipp – first mother then daughter

Wilma Lipp was really a high-flyer. She made her debut as an opera singer at the age of 17, became a member of the Vienna State Opera at 20, had her breakthrough as “Queen of the Night” in the “Magic Flute” at 23 and recorded the opera (not for the first time!) with Karajan when she was 25 in 1950. Richard Osborne wrote about the recording, saying that it was “stylishly, often imaginatively conducted, and for the most part wonderfully well sung by a cast which showed the fabled post-war Vienna Mozart ensemble somewhere near its best.”
Karajan worked with Lipp at all “his” opera houses – the Vienna State Opera throughout his management 1957 – 1964, the Salzburg Festival, the Scala di Milan – and even at one of his rare appearances in Bayreuth.
It was the scene of their first joint live performance, “Siegfried” in 1951 with Lipp as the Woodbird, and it was the same part that brought them together six years later when Karajan created a completely new “Ring” at the Vienna State Opera. Their first production with Lipp actually acting (as Marzelline) and not only “chirping” off-stage was “Fidelio” in January 1958.
Lipp took over the part of Woglinde in Wagner’s “Rheingold” as well as in “Götterdämmerung” from 1958 to the last weeks of Karajan’s era at the State Opera in 1964. Gluck’s “Orfeo ed Euridice” in 1959 with Lipp as Euridice also featured Giulietta Simionato as Orfeo and Anneliese Rothenberger as Eros.
Karajan worked on many occasions with Lipp when he performed vocal works in concert – Haydn’s “Nelson Mass” and “The Creation”, Mozart’s Requiem, Beethoven’s Ninth and Missa Solemnis, Bruckner’s Te Deum and Brahms’ German Requiem. A once-in-a-lifetime event for Karajan and Lipp were two concerts with Benjamin Britten’s “War Requiem” in Berlin in 1964, two years after the first performance under the baton of the composer in Coventry. Unfortunately, Karajan didn’t take the work into his repertoire and never recorded or performed it again.
Wilma Lipp performed 75 times with Karajan, mostly in Vienna but also in Salzburg. In summer 1961 it was “Don Giovanni”, with Lipp as Donna Elvira succeeding Elisabeth Schwarzkopf for this production.
In the following year, Lipp appeared in an opera she had recorded with Karajan twelve years before, “The Magic Flute”, but this time not as Queen of the Night but as her daughter Pamina. The production took place in the “Theater an der Wien”, an opera house which has been associated with the “The Magic Flute” since its opening in 1801.
Karajan and Wilma Lipp didn’t collaborate for 19 (!) years. When she had already retired from the stage, Karajan persuaded her to make a comeback in the small part of the “Jungfer Marianne Leitmetzerin”, Sophie’s chaperone, in the 2nd act of Richard Strauss’ “Der Rosenkavalier”. Lipp performed twelve times in the Salzburg seasons 1983/1984 and did the studio recording in between. Wilma Lipp died in 2019, aged 93.
— P.R. JenkinsRichard Osborne: “Karajan. A Life in Music” Chatto & Windus, London. 1998