Herta Glaz (1910 – 2006)

The Austrian-born mezzo-soprano, Herta Glaz, who sang over three hundred performances with the Metropolitan Opera in the 1940s and 50s, died on January 28. She was ninety-five years old. Herta Glaz began her studies at the Academy of Music in Vienna and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. She made her opera debut in Breslau in Wagner’s Das Rheingold, at the age of nineteen. After performing for some years under Ernst Krenek and Otto Klemperer, she appeared for the first time in the U.S. in 1936. She later chose to remain in the U.S. for the rest of her career because of the political turmoil and threat of war in Europe. She sang over fourteen seasons with the Met before joining the Manhattan School of Music where she taught until 1977. Subsequently, she became an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and also taught at the Aspen Music School until 1994. Herta Glaz was married three times: to the conductor Joseph Rosenstock, to Viennese composer Paul August Csonka, and to Frederick Redlich, former Viennese psychiatrist and later Dean of the Yale University School of Medicine, who was her  husband of nearly fifty years. Ms. Glaz is survived by a stepson, Peter Chester, and a grandson.