Force Majeure'd: The Story of Margarethe Arndt-Ober

The "German she-devil" who sued the Met for breach of contract — in 1917

May 22, 2020

Earlier this year, faced with an unprecedented event, the Metropolitan Opera cancelled the remainder of its 2019-20 season due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The slow death of the final months of the season, issued in bits until it became clear that reopening at all this spring would be ill-advised, came with the notification that all soloists would forfeit their fees. Shortly thereafter, the Met also furloughed its orchestra and chorus (who are paid on salary), citing force majeure.

The slippery nature of force majeure sparked an international debate on how singers are paid, when they’re paid, and what happens when the unexpected arrives. While the Met continued its season during the Spanish Flu outbreak in the beginning of the 20th Century, it did have some experience in that time with a furlough on a smaller scale. But even then, it was enough to lead one of its most acclaimed mezzo-sopranos to fight back, suing the company for breach of contract. The effects of the whole affair would lead to a singer with nearly 200 Met performances under her belt, a singer who was once “besieged” by “emotional journalists” as an “expert in the subtle art of love-making,” a singer who Caruso described as “the German She-Devil” to be relegated to the role of historical footnote, and legal precedent.

Margarethe Ober was born in Berlin on April 15, 1885. Her parents owned a produce shop but, as her contemporary Frida Leider would later recall, “the mysterious Gretchen… was never allowed to serve in the shop.” Instead, the mysterious Gretchen was taking music lessons in single-minded pursuit of her dream to become an opera singer. At 16, she began studying with the legendary tenor Benno Stolzenberg; her debut at 21 in 1906 as Azucena in Frankfurt was the last career Stolzenberg would see launched (he died a week later).

The following year, Margarethe — having abandoned the youthful Gretchen — had a contract in Szczecin (in what is now Poland but at the time was part of Germany). Unfortunately, she was fired after a month “due to a lack of talent.” But back in Berlin, a chance encounter with the composer and conductor Leo Blech led Margarethe to meet teacher Arthur Arndt. The match worked on both a pedagogical and personal level, and the couple eventually married in 1910.

Margarethe Arndt-Ober and Arthur Arndt (and a Very Good Dog), ca. 1916

Being in her hometown served Margarethe well, too. The era of Kaiser Wilhelm II was a high time for the arts, and nowhere was this more true than in the German capital. In the same year as her dismissal from Szczecin, she made her debut at the Royal Opera (now known as the Staatsoper), and continued as a member of the company until her retirement. When Caruso came to the house to sing Radames in Aida, she was his Amneris. Caruso, taken with his partner’s performance, called her "the German She-Devil.”

“The German She-Devil”: Margarethe Ober as Amneris in Aida at the Berlin Royal Opera (now Staatsoper Unter den Linden)

In 1911, Margarethe received one of her major career breaks when she sang the title role in the Berlin premiere of Der Rosenkavalier, shortly after the opera’s world premiere in Dresden, opposite soprano Freida Hempel as the Marschallin and with Richard Strauss guiding the rehearsals. When the opera was slated for its US premiere at the Met in 1913, Margarethe and Frieda were brought over with it.

It’s easy today to take for granted the “If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium” nature of singers’ schedules. As Hempel describes her own decision to sing at the Met in 1912, however, this was a major life change on par with a permanent move. At her farewell concert in Berlin, she felt “as though I were saying goodbye to my own family.”

But the Met kept its singers busy throughout the season. Margarethe made her company debut (listed as Margarete Ober, without the “H” or the “Arndt”) as Ortud in Lohengrin on November 21, 1913. A week later, she sang Marina in Boris Godunov, a role she learned specifically for the Met. And, a few days before the premiere of Der Rosenkavalier, she was heard as Erda in Siegfried. (If that sounds a bit much, the final week of 1913 heard Margarethe as Brangäne in Tristan und Isolde on Christmas Eve, Laura in La Gioconda on Christmas Day, Amneris on December 27, and Octavian on December 29.)

Margarethe Ober (right) and Freida Hempel (left) in Der Rosenkavalier at the Met (Photo: White Studio/Metropolitan Opera Archives)

Not only did Margarethe win over New York, she caused devoted Wagnerites to abandon tradition and propriety. “A houseful of devout Wagnerites cast artistic etiquette to the winds in the second act long enough to blot out a few bars of Elsa's music with a perfect hurricane of applause after the newcomer had delIvered Ortrud's invocation,” wrote Musical America of her American debut, adding:

“This Ortud is probably unsurpassed by any living impersonator of the character. Sensitive to every latent dramatic possibility of the part she emphasized details last week that illumine the action with a wealth of significance but to which most singers are oblivious.”

If anything, Margarethe Ober was too good. Her castmates on the night of her debut felt this as well, and reportedly refused to give her the triumph of a solo curtain call. Her accolades continued beyond her first outing, however. TheNew York Times had equal praise for her Marina in Boris Godunov, and singled out Ober as chief among a uniformly exceptional cast for the American premiere of Der Rosenkavalier:

“A more brilliant piece of work has not been enjoyed here for a long time. The fire, vivacity, and youthful ardor, the mischievous comic spirit of her acting, the adroitness with which she carries off the somewhat difficult task of a young woman representing a young man disguised as a young woman are wholly delightful. She engages all the sympathies of her listeners at once and keeps them for the Rosenkavalier through the whole opera.”

Ober soon found herself at the center of a media frenzy, in a time before publicists, marketing plans, or social media. Journalists from the society section and women’s pages began to fixate on the singer’s performance in the first scene of Der Rosenkavalier, which features (in no uncertain terms), Octavian and the Marschallin in the afterglow of a night of lovemaking. How did she do it, they all wanted to know: How did she so convincingly play an amorous young boy? Ober received more than a few offers to write articles on “How to Make Love.” One woman wanted to make her the face of a new movement wherein women proposed to men.

This reception in the States didn’t mirror Der Rosenkavalier’s premiere in Berlin (although, to be fair, the opening bedroom scene was modified in deference to the Kaiser and his wife being in the audience). Nor was Ober prepared for the US custom of critics attending more than the first night of performances. “One ‘bucks up’ for the premiere (fur die Première, nimmt man sich zusammen), and then one may relax, since the press is not present,” she noted. “But here your critics are writing reports after every performance. It seems to me it would be impossible for the Berlin critics to do likewise, since they have twenty concerts a night sometimes, so that they can just run in, hear a single song and then move along to their next concert.”

Ober’s talents were also considered for the burgeoning film industry, one that several of her Met colleagues had already dabbled in by 1914 (soprano Geraldine Farrar owned a home on Hollywood Boulevard). She supposed it wouldn’t be the worst thing for her to do, but seemed wary of the American practice of having singers “do things in addition to singing.”

Reading all of this today, Margarethe Ober, seems like Elīna Garanča or the Anna Netrebko of her day: a European import whose vocal talents were matched with a stage-animal persona. In fact, when Musical America made Anna Netrebko its artist of the year in 2008, they wrote: “She is the very model of the modern opera star. A natural dramatic flair, striking voice, and interpretive savvy, combined with her dark Russian beauty, stunning figure, and uncommon sensual allure, have made her the hottest diva in the world.”

None of this is too far off from the publication’s comments, 95 years earlier, on Ober’s “intensity of dramatic expression,” which made her “an actress of altogether exceptional penetration and insight,” along with her “chameleon-like” voice that “changes color with every subtle modification of dramatic sentiment… perfect is the only term,” and, thanks to her Octavian, an “expert in the subtle art of love-making.” (As for the stunning figure, all MA notes is that she is “a large woman,” which may speak more to her “imposing” height and “striking” style than her waistline.)

With such a following and no accompanying scandals to speak of, Ober’s career could have continued to flourish in New York, making her a star on par with Geraldine Farrar or Olive Fremstad. Her initial contract with the Met was for 5 years, and so she and Arthur had effectively abandoned Berlin, settling at 840 West End Avenue and taking a country home in the Adirondacks where their son, Wilhelm, was born. Sure, she struggled with English, but so did colleagues like Frieda Hempel (who, when arriving in the United States to an immediate press conference, was told by the Metropolitan rep to simply answer anything she didn’t understand with “Sure, Mike!”).

What no one had banked on, however, was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June of 1914. In a growing ante of allegiances and alliances, Germany aligned with Austria-Hungary in a war against Serbia, while Russia backed the Serbs and was, in turn, backed by France. Britain then entered the mix and declared war on Germany. That summer, Musical America ran a headline proclaiming European musical life “paralyzed by war,” which would in turn impact the ability of European singers who spent their seasons at the Met and their summers in Bayreuth or Salzburg to travel between continents (to say nothing of the male artists who may be called upon to serve their countries).

“Unless the portentous conflict can be ended within a month or thereabouts,” warned Musical America, “or unless some manner of transporting to this country the great numbers of operatic and concert stars now abroad for vacations or Summer engagements it becomes well nigh impossible to determine… how musical performances of such unparalleled excellence as have been enjoyed here for years can be provided next Winter.” A front-page photo spread showed just some of the men who made music on either side of the Atlantic, and whose numbers could be called up — for the benefit of the war effort, but to the detriment of music lovers.

The speculation circulating through Europe that summer was that the Met would have no choice but to cancel its upcoming season. “Everyone was in great turmoil, and none of us knew what steps to take,” recalled Hempel. She, like many others, believed “with the new, modern weapons” that were being used, the war “would surely be over in a matter of weeks.” And so she, like many other artists on the Met’s roster, remained in limbo while waiting to see if they should go home and risk their contracts, or hold on to see if they could make it back to New York by the start of the season in November.

At the time, the Met was headed by Giulio Gatti-Casazza, a former naval engineer who had run La Scala up until 1908. Italy at the time was still neutral, as was the United States. Gatti (as he was called) reasoned, “we were assisted materially by the Germans, who did not want German opera to lose the position of importance it held in New York.” Through Gatti’s connections, Germany agreed that summer to let the Met have its artists. It was Gatti’s negotiations that helped get tenor Albert Reiss (who sang Nick in the world premiere of La fanciulla del West) out of a French internment camp (less lucky was French-Algerien baritone Dinh Gilly, interned in Austria).

The impresario met his singers (and conductor Arturo Toscanini) in Naples, including Caruso, Hempel, Farrar, Emmy Destinn, and Elisabeth Schumann. Dubbed “the Opera Noah’s Ark,” the Canopic took a zig-zagging route to the United States to avoid submarine attacks. For the first part of the crossing, they remained in total darkness until they reached safe waters. It was a relief to everyone when they made it safely to Boston less than two weeks after setting out from Italy.

But that was only the beginning of the worries for Gatti during the period of World War I. No flowers or gifts were allowed to be given to singers during curtain calls, instead being delivered to dressing rooms. Singers, too, were expected to remain neutral, among colleagues and with the public. If peace wasn’t a possibility in Europe, it would at least be so at the Met.

Meanwhile, Ober’s career continued to rise under Gatti’s model, which mirrored the early studio system of Hollywood: Stars were contracted to a specific studio (or, in this case, opera house) and sang what was given to them, usually a mix of major roles and supporting parts. In that season, which was dominated by her Wagner roles (including Erda in Das Rheingold, Fricka in Die Walüre, and Waltrautein Götterdämmerung), Ober was named by New York Times and New York Sun critic William James Henderson “one of the grand figures of the drama.”

But Ober also earned acclaim for her Verdian rep, especially Amneris and Azucena. And she sang lighter roles, like Octavian, Nancy in Martha, Kate in Hermann Goetz’s adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew, and the Wife of Bath in a new American opera, Reginald De Koven’s The Canterbury Pilgrims. This premiere, it turns out, would be the last role Ober sang on the Met stage.

The Canterbury Pilgrims opened at the Met on March 8, 1917. Less than a month later, on April 2, Ober was in her fifth performance of the work when an unanticipated event stopped the performance: Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany. Gatti had known that the President would address Congress that evening; so did most of the audience, who that night were as focused on the war extras as they were on the performance. At one point, abandoning all decorum, newspapers were spread across the balcony railings.

Gatti was aware of the increased tension between Americans and Germans in 1917, though noted that, “American audiences remained cordial to the German singers and the German operas.” But American audiences also didn't hold back with support for their allies. A few days before the premiere of The Canterbury Pilgrims, Giordano’s Mme Sans-Gêne, starring Geraldine Farrar, ran on March 2. The work, a comedy about a laundress who becomes a duchess in Napoleonic France, includes a performance of the Marseillaise as part of the score, one that, given the geopolitical climate of 1917, earned a standing ovation from the audience. (“Signor Giordano's part was lost in the shuffle,” read one review.)

Exactly one month later, the results of Wilson’s speech circulated through the audience during The Canterbury Pilgrims. Reports differ on what had been planned and what was spontaneous A Musical America report from the following week suggested that Gatti had planned in advance for this inevitability with the performance’s conductor, Artur Bodanzky (an Austrian citizen). According to Musical America, Bodanzky happily agreed to conduct “The Star Spangled Banner” if necessary, and the orchestra’s musicians arrived in the pit that evening to find both the scores for De Koven’s opera and the American national anthem.

A 1967 article in The American Legion Magazine remembers things differently, with Gatti being implored during the performance to “Read the news from the stage, [or] have the orchestra play ‘The Star Spangled Banner.’” He was implored to do this by James W. Gerard, who up until the beginning of February of 1917 had been the US ambassador to Germany. During intermission, Gerard had heard shouting in the street outside the old Met, confirmed the news by phoning one of the newspapers, and then cornered Gatti. In this version of the story, Gatti refused, saying “The opera company is neutral,” leaving Gerard himself to make a speech from his opera box and the orchestra responding with a spontaneous performance of the national anthem, without the sanction of Gatti.

According to Musical America, the anthem was in fact played twice, as the cheers — for Ambassador Gerard, for Woodrow Wilson, for the US’s allies, for its army, for its navy — were so out of control that the only fitting response seemed to be an encore.

The detail that is consistent through all reports is that, following the display of patriotism, Margarethe Ober tried to continue the performance of the final act. After a few minutes, however, she fell to the stage in a faint, overcome by the emotions of the evening. Johannes Sembach, who was singing the role of Geoffrey Chaucer, and Max Bloch, singing the Friar, carried her offstage to her dressing room, where she remained for the rest of the performance. Her absence went undiscussed.

Bodanzky soldiered on with the score, although the remaining singers onstage only barely got through the final act themselves. Backstage, Ober’s compatriot, baritone Robert Leonhardt, also fainted, but rejoined the company for the work’s finale. (That same night, in Thermopolis, Wyoming, a drifter who toasted the Kaiser in a local saloon was strung up by the neck, removed from the rafters thanks to a passing town marshal. He was saved, but then forced “to kneel, kiss the American flag, and was run out of town.”)

The New York Times, April 3, 1917

A few days later, Ober sang Amneris in a performance of Aida on April 5. On April 6, which was Good Friday, the Met prepared for its traditional staging of Parsifal for the holiday, which happened to be the same day that Congress officially declared war. The Met’s 1916-17 season ended for Ober on April 27 with a performance of Boris Godunov in Atlanta (where she also sang a performance of Il trovatore). Her last performance in the Met proper was on April 21, in the seventh and final performance the Met ever gave of The Canterbury Pilgrims.

In his memoirs, Gatti calls the subsequent 1917-18 season at the Met “the hardest I had ever had up to this time,” which was saying something as he faced an uphill battle in his first years at the Met. While the company at that time usually planned its repertoire for the next season in February, Gatti and company had held off in 1917 in order to see what happened on the world stage before deciding what would go on the Met’s stage. Concerned about how German opera would be received by the public in this new climate, he quietly asked some members of the press what to do. “You must continue to present German opera,” came the response. “This country, in a question of art, is broadminded. You can go on giving German operas with German artists.”

When Gatti pressed, asking “Do you think, that when war really strikes this country — for the moment there has only been a declaration of war — we shall be able to continue the German repertoire?” The answer was yes.

Gatti planned the season as usual, but, by October, found that the climate had shifted. The realities of war had begun to sink in, and the length of the war combined with the number of dead had taken the public by surprise. Several members of the Met’s board cautioned Gatti to be careful with the season rep, which was due to begin the following month.

Ultimately, the board made the formal decision to revise the season to eliminate German-language works. They had, as a fallback, a law as well as public opinion: German copyrights, they argued, fell under the 1917 Trading with the Enemy Act. Gatti had one week to change the season. “We succeeded so well that, even without Wagner, we presented a season of twenty-three weeks that included many extra performances and that embraced almost forty operas,” Gatti would later recall.

That was how Margarethe Ober, along with a handful of other singers, was force majeure’d out of her contract at the Metropolitan Opera. She wasn’t the only one: Tenor Johannes Sembach, bass Carl Braun, soprano Melanie Kurt, and baritone Hermann Weil were also let go. Frieda Hempel managed to stay, either because she was engaged to an American and therefore set to become a US citizen, or because she sang a more diverse repertoire (including performances of Donizetti’s La fille du Régiment in which she kissed the French flag as part of the staging).

And yet, because they had all planned on business as usual for the season, those singers who were cut loose from the Met on a moment’s notice were all stuck in America and faced with a catch-22: They couldn’t work in the States, but they couldn’t return home. Audiences were shocked as well, at least initially. In 1915, an un-bylined New York Times editorial argued:

"There are enough operagoers of German descent and German birth in town always to make productions of German opera profitable, even if people who disapprove of German methods of conducting war should permit their resentment of German faults to blind them to German merits… the Metropolitan Opera House […] does not permit its plans to be deranged by war."

An article in a December 1917 issue of The Bellman showed that this sentiment hadn’t uniformly changed in the intervening years: “The canceling of German music is cheap and childish and goes against the President’s plea to keep in mind the great debt the World owes to the German people and also the very principles we are fighting for.”

That November, Ober responded by suing the Met for breach of contract, asking for $50,000 (which, adjusted for inflation, would today be the equivalent of over $937,000).

The New York Times, November 18, 1917

Initially, the Met tried to shut down the suit altogether, filing a petition for a stay as “Mme. Ober is an enemy alien and as such her suit is in the same situation as those of other enemy aliens which have been postponed until the close of the war.”

Supreme Court Justice Gavegan denied this motion, “on the broad ground that the resident subjects of an alien enemy are entitled to invoke the process of our courts as long as they are guilty of no act inconsistent with the temporary alliance which they hold for this government.” In other words, Ober had a right to sue, because she also had a right to sing opera in the United States.

“To extend the right to work, but to withhold the remedy to collect compensation,” concluded Justice Gavegan, “would be as much of a mockery as to present the shell after extracting the meat.”

For Ober, fainting or not, the situation seemed clear: She had moved to the United States in 1913, and had only travelled back to Europe twice in the four years since she joined the Met. She participated in the 1917 census. She had two homes in New York, and her only child had been born there. Moreover, Ober objected to the use of the term “enemy alien,” which, at the time, was defined as all male citizens or subjects of Germany, older than 14, who were in the United States but not naturalized. Whether or not it was an accurate label, President WIlson had also declared that any alien enemies living in the United States, “so long as they shall conduct themselves in accordance with law, they shall be undisturbed in the peaceful pursuit of their lives and occupations and be accorded the consideration due to all peaceful and law-abiding persons, except so far as restrictions may be necessary for their own protection and for the safety of the United States.”

Trying a different tack, the Met alleged that the real reason they severed their contract with Ober was because she “had her sympathies enlisted on behalf of the German cause, and she has at various times openly and outwardly manifested her sympathy with the cause of Germany and her hostility to the United States of America.” Because of this “openly manifested” “bitterness and hostility” towards America, she had contributed to a hostile work environment that “injured the discipline and orderly conduct of the defendant’s business so that it became impossible to continue the defendant in its services.”

“I am simply an artist,” Ober responded in a court filing. “I have never mixed in politics and have been careful to do nothing which would antagonize the public, whose favor I have to so great an extent and enjoyed and before whom it is my earnest desire and hope to appear again.… When a great corporation stoops to such so-called defenses, it clearly exposes to what straits it is willing to resort.”

That statement was filed on May 28, 1918, nearly six months to the day after Ober had served the Met with her initial lawsuit. Less than six months later, the war would be over. Anticlimactically, the case was settled out of court. Ober then fixated on getting out of the United States and back home to Germany, although she wasn’t able to do so until 1919, when she sailed back to Germany on a Danish liner via Copenhagen. She wound up returning to the United States in the same year, in an effort to launch a German opera company with baritone Otto Goritz and bass Carl Braun (both former Met singers). The general director was Benno Loewy, who had been Ober’s attorney. Loewy died that August in a traffic accident and, after an October 19 concert to inaugurate the new company was picketed by the American Legion, the whole enterprise was scrapped.

Margarethe Ober resumed life in Berlin, where she sang the Kostelnicka in the city’s first performances of Jenufa in 1924. The following year, she starred in the Berlin premiere of Schrecker’s Der ferne Klang, opposite the composer’s wife Maria and legendary tenor Richard Tauber, with Erich Kleiber conducting.

By the end of her career, however, Germany was once again embroiled in a World War, and Margarethe preferred to sing for the soldiers as a contribution to the war effort (no record of her political allegiance in that time seems to exist). In 1945, she retired, and settled in the sleepy mountain town of Bad Sachsa, where she died in 1971. The only existing obituary I’ve been able to find for her online was a six-sentence notice in a 1971 issue of Opera magazine.

What had led to the quiet fade-out of Margarethe Arndt-Ober? In 2020, it’s almost impossible to think — even with political tensions between the US and Russia a reality, and even with her frank support of the Russian government — that a singer like Anna Netrebko could just as easily be excised from cultural memory. Is it simply that Margarethe was a victim of a time before widespread recording technology, easier international travel, and surviving press archives? Did she want to pursue life out of the spotlight after a public legal battle with the United States’s leading opera house?

We don’t know. Unlike Hempel, Ober never wrote her memoirs. She gave few interviews, and it’s unsurprising, given the course of history between US and German relations between 1919 and the time of her retirement, that she would slowly fade away from American consciousness. And, after 1945, Berlin had other things to worry about than the memory of one singer. Even one as acclaimed as Margarethe Arndt-Ober.

Much like her fainting spell at the Met, she was simply taken offstage and her absence largely went unremarked-upon, with history instead taking over the narrative.

Thanks for subscribing to Undone. Next week: the last Met debut anyone ever expected to happen, happens.

Critical Drift

Discussion about this post