Wilhelm Furtwaengler called her "the best we have".
When Erna Berger sang the part of Zerlina for the great conductor at the Salzburg Festival in 1953/54, her voice was as young and fresh-sounding as it had been 20 years before, when Furtwaengler engaged her at the Berlin State Opera.
At an age when most coloratura sopranos are forced to stop singing, or to change to another register, Erna Berger was still singing the parts of young girls such as Sophie, Martha and Gilda.
When she sang Schubert´s "Im Abendrot" in 1980 for a television portrait to mark her eightieth birthday, the voice sounded as young as ever.
Berger´s voice was not a big one, but it could bear quite a strain, which is one reason why the petite singer also enjoyed great success in dramatic coloratura roles like Konstanze and the Queen of the Night.
She was often announced as a "vocal prodigy" and a "sensation", it´s true: but she never belonged to the species of the vocal acrobat. She never sang mechanically and soullessly: her singing was deeply felt, and could be witty and charming, cheeky and quick-tempered or touchingly vulnerable in turn, as the role required.
With her great musicality and a very concise articulaation never achieved at the expense of the vocal line, she won international fame as a Lieder singer too.
Erna Berger followed a circuitous path to the career of a professional singer.Encouraged by the great soprano Elisabeth Rethberg, she decided to audition for a place in the chorus of the Dresden Opera at the age of 17. Then her father, a railway engineer, resolved to emigrate to Paraguay with the family: they had gradually built up a new live for themselves - not whitout considerable sacrifices - when the father fell seriously ill and died. In the years that followed, Erna Berger worked as a private tutor.
When she was 23, she had saved enough money to return to her native Dresden. She took an office job, and in her spare time she went to the wife of the Dresden tenor Max Hirzel for singing lessons.Two years later, she was engaged by Fritz Busch as a soubrette for the Dresden State Opera. She made her Opera debut as the first youth in The Magic Flute, and not long after this, she appeared in Tannhaeuser as the shepherd - a part she sang again in 1930 at the Bayreuth Festial under the baton of Arturo Toscanini.
Since Erna Berger had thoroughly studied all the productions of the Dresden State Opera, she was soon able to stand in bigger parts such as Oscar in Verdi´s Un Ballo in Maschera, Zerbinetta in Ariane auf Naxos and Aennchen in The Freischuetz.More or less marking the end of her apprenticeship as a soubrette in Dresden, she sang Blonde in Mozart´s Entfuerung, with Fritz Busch as conductor, at the Salzburg Festival in 1932. Soon afterwards, she made her debut at the Staedtische Oper Berlin in the role of Konstanze, and she changed to the coloratura register until she left in 1934 for the Berlin State Opera.
Over the next few years, she sang some 30 parts here, and also made guest appearances at the Vienna State Opera, at London´s Covent Garden and many other major European opera houses.
After the war, she was the first German singer to be engaged by the Metropolitan Operainin New York (debut in 1949 as Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier. Major tours of Australia, South America and Japan established her reputation as "Germany´s musical ambassador".In 1959, Erna Berger was appointed Professor for Singing at the Hamburg College of Musik, and she brought her stage career to an end the following year.
Erna Berger gave her last song recital in 1968, and after bidding farewell to her teaching post in Hamburg, she made the town of Essen her home. She published her memoirs in1988 under the Titel"Auf Fluegeln des Gesanges" (On the wings of song).
Only four months before her 90th birthday, Erna Berger passed away on 14th june 1990.
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