| Marianne Helene Sara Mathy (1890 - 1978) born 23 June 1890 in Mannheim, Germany died 15 October 1978 in Double Bay, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia |
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June Bronhill referred to Marianne Mathy as her ‘second mother’, and well she might have done since, as far as musical experience at the highest professional level is concerned few teachers in Australia after WW2 were in the same league. Born in Mannheim, baptised Lutheran though her father Jewish, her cultured family had friends who had been connected to Brahms and among them she met Otto Furtwängler. That her early musical training placed great importance on the text sits curiously with a restriction she faced shortly after arrival in Australia in 1939 – at the outbreak of war the government banned all broadcasts of spoken and sung German. For the last forty years of her life she lived in Double Bay, Sydney. Known as Madame Mathy, she taught a number of the principal singers of the period and, encouraged by Sir Eugene Goosens, taught voice production at Sydney’s Conservatorium of music. Elegant, profoundly conscious of her appearance, at the age of 73 she travelled to Switzerland for rejuvenating monkey-gland injections. But death took her and her voice five years later. |
