Susan Salms-Moss
Susan Salms-Moss is an American opera singer who made her career singing leading soprano roles in Europe. She appeared in numerous theaters in Germany, and throughout Europe, and is best known in dramatic soprano roles.
After beginning her career in 1977 in Germany, Salms-Moss joined the Städtische Bühnen in Regensburg, where she performed from 1986 to 1999 while continuing to accept contracts elsewhere in Germany and throughout Europe. Her roles have ranged from Mozart to Puccini, Verdi, Strauss, Janáček, Rimsky-Korsakov, Debussy and Berg. Her concert programs included works especially in the French and Russian repertoire.
Biography
Early life and education
Salms-Moss was born on April 28, 1946, in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Louis B. Moss, a manufacturer, and Dorris Teicher Moss, a homemaker. Her mother's family stemmed from near Lviv, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and her father's family came from Odessa and the surrounding countryside. Both sides of the family are Ukrainian Jewish. She grew up on Long Island and graduated from Great Neck South High School in 1963. In 1967, she earned her B.A. from Brown University, where she majored in French literature. At the same time, she studied voice and performed in concerts and on stage.After college, Salms-Moss moved to New York City and worked as part of a research project in foreign language teaching and testing methods at the Modern Language Association, while continuing to study voice privately, especially with Else Seyfert. Conductor Laszlo Halasz, founding music director of New York City Opera, encouraged Salms-Moss to go to Geneva, Switzerland, in 1968, and study with Maria Carpi, best known for having trained soprano Gwyneth Jones. The year of music studies at the Conservatoire de Genève convinced Salms-Moss to pursue a career in opera. In 1977, she earned a music degree, with distinction, at the Musikhochschule Rheinland in Düsseldorf, Germany, where she studied with Wagnerian soprano Astrid Varnay.
Career
Salms-Moss made her professional opera debut, in the autumn of 1977, as the leading soprano at the Städtische Bühnen in Münster, Germany; where her first role was Amelia in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera, and she repeated the role in 1988. Other early roles included Mimi and Musetta in La Bohème, Marguerite in Faust, Violetta in La Traviata, Tatiana in Eugene Onegin and the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro. Her career took her to numerous theaters in Germany in the following years. From 1986 until 1999 she was a member of the Städtische Bühnen in Regensburg, Germany, while continuing to accept contracts throughout Europe, including at the Vienna Volksoper. She played the title role in Bellini's Norma. Her other Mozart roles included Fiordiligi in Cosi fan tutte, another run of the Countess in Figaro, and Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni. She sang the Verdi heroines in Aida, Leonora in La Forza del Destino, Desdemona in Otello, Leonora in Il Trovatore, Alice in Falstaff, and Abigaille in Nabucco.Her Puccini roles included the title character in Tosca and Giorgetta in Il Tabarro. She has played all three Janáček heroines, Katya Kabanova, and Emilia Marty in The Makropoulos Case and the title character in Jenufa. Ventures into modern repertoire included Fevronia in Rimsky-Korsakov's The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh, Marie in Berg's Wozzeck, and Die Dame in Hindemith's Cardillac. Rare departures into traditionally mezzo-soprano repertoire were Mélisande in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande and Weir's Blond Eckbert. Roles in lighter pieces included Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus, and the Mother Abbess in The Sound of Music in Innsbruck in the first Austrian production. She performed the major works of Richard Strauss, such as Salome, the Feldmarschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, and, having sung Chrysothemis in Elektra in 1987, she played the title role in 1998. She also played Katerina in Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Salms-Moss's concert programs included works in several languages and styles, in particular the French and Russian repertoire.
Salms-Moss became fluent in French, German, Italian and Russian, in addition to her native English. Parallel with her singing career, she translated German texts into English, including a number of full-length books, and was a member of the international translating group ExperTeam; since retiring from opera, she has worked as a freelance translator based in New York and coached singers in the German repertoire.