Sigrid Onégin

Sigrid Onégin was a Franco-German contralto and mezzo-soprano, the daughter of a French father and a German mother though often described as Swedish for her birthplace. She sang first under her own name, Lilly Hoffmann; after marrying the Russian émigré pianist and composer Eugen Lvov, who had adopted the surname of Pushkin's Onegin, she performed briefly as Lilly Hoffmann-Onégin before settling on the professional name Sigrid Onégin. She studied in Munich and Milan, with further lessons from Lilli Lehmann and Margarethe Siems, and was first engaged by the Stuttgart Opera in 1912, where she created a Dryad in the premiere of Ariadne auf Naxos that October. Widowed young, she was a member of the Munich Opera from 1919 to 1922 and remarried the physician Fritz Penzoldt in 1920. She sang two seasons at the Metropolitan Opera (1922-24) and one at Covent Garden (1927), in both houses confined to Amneris and Wagner roles, and also appeared at Salzburg and Bayreuth. Her greatest successes came in concerts; her recordings are prized for their rich tone and technique.