Born in Berlin,
she enjoyed a career of international proportions that began there. After
studying with Heinrich Dorn, Senger-Bettaque made a youthful début at the
Hofoper (1879) in Rubinstein’s Feramors. Engagements as a lyric s. at Hamburg, Leipzig, Mainz and Rotterdam
followed, and in 1888 she sang Eva and a "Blumenmädchen" at Bayreuth. Later that year
she headed for New York and the Metropolitan where she was billed as Kathi
Bettaque (Herr Senger was a few years down the road) and sang Freia in the
American premiere of Das Rheingold, Marguerite in Faust, Sélika, Elsa,
Marzelline in Fidelio, Sieglinde, Elisabeth and other rôles. At Covent Garden
in 1892, she appeared in a number of her New York
rôles as well as Gutrune, and Venus in Tannhäuser, but in 1894 she found her
"home base" when she was named principal dramatic s. at Munich. This house would
be the center of her activities for most of her remaining career. Senger-Bettaque
returned to the Met for a month of guest appearances during the 1904 – 05
season; by then her ambitions and European successes had her tackling the Die
Walküre and Siegfried Brünnhildes and Leonore in Fidelio. In these rôles, the New York critics did not
like her. She was, apparently, successful in these same rôles at Stuttgart (1906 – 09),
and then her career seems to have come to and end. Today, Katherina
Senger-Bettaque is an enigma lost to the ages. Even the year and location of
her death are unknown, shrouded by the years that followed. Groves Dictionary
of Opera is non-committal, cleverly assuming her death occurred after 1909
since she was still singing in Stuttgart
then. Other sources have her alive in Berlin
in the early to mid 1920s. It is sad, and somewhat baffling, due to her obvious
talent and the wide scope of her long career, that she has been forgotten. Recordings:
These remain as enigmatic as the singer who recorded them. Senger-Bettaque is
known to have made about ten recordings in Europe
between 1901 – 05, and all belong in the "rare as stardust" category.
Most are of song titles, and from what can be heard it appears that the
recording process of her day unnerved her. The voice frequently sounds ill at
ease, if not frightened. Some of this can be heard in one of her earliest
discs, Franz’s lovely "Es hat die Rose sich beklagt." But the voice
in general is of pure and lyric quality, almost "pretty," despite a
variation from pitch or two. In fairness, it may have been that she was
laboring under hopelessly inferior recording conditions, for even the piano
accompaniment has a garbled, "wobbly" sound to it. A coupling of
Wolf’s songs "Gesang Weylas" and "Morgentau," made a few
years later, has a much steadier sound and Senger-Bettaque seems relaxed in the
music; the voice here in much warmer and more appealing. One of her few
operatic excerpts is Elsa’s "Euch Lüften, die mein Klagen." It is a
well-sung piece with a charm of its own, but hardly displays a heroic or
Brünnhilde-sized voice. After hearing her Elsa, it is difficult to imagine her
as Ortrud in the same opera, but that rôle was in her large repertoire as well.
She sang it once at a Met matinée in January 1905, with Emma Eames as Elsa. The
volatile, cold-blooded American seems to have been particularly out of control
that afternoon; after what she perceived to be an "upstaging" during
the curtain calls, she slapped Senger-Bettaque across the face in full view of
the audience! Reporters raced to her dressing room for comments, but the
gracious Senger-Bettaque seemed outwardly unruffled. "Oh, I did not resent
it," was her deceptively magnanimous reply. Then she added: "I was
really surprised and delighted to see any evidence of emotion in Madame
Eames."
Chronology of some appearances
1879 Berlin Hofoper
1888 Bayreuth Festival
1892 London Covent Garden
RECORDINGS FOR SALE
G&T, München 1905
Gesang Weylas (Wolf); Morgentau (Wolf) 43665 3131L
Lohengrin (Wagner): Euch Lüften 43668 3134L
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