Margarete Wallmann

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Margarete Wallmann or Wallman (aka Margarethe Wallmann, Margherita Wallman or Margarita Wallmann) (22 June 1904 – 2 May 1992) was an Austrian ballerina, choreographer, stage designer and director.

Wallmann was born Margarete Burghauser in Berlin, Germany, the daughter of a Viennese leather-goods manufacturer and trained at the Vienna State Opera before going to Paris to study with Olga Preobrajenska. At 15, she was already a soloist at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. But her career as a dancer came to an abrupt end in 1934. During a rehearsal at the Vienna Opera House, a trap door opened suddenly, and Margherita plunged, she says, "like Eurydice into the underworld." She fell 14 feet onto an iron framework, breaking a hip.^[1]

She founded a ballet school in Berlin in the 1930s while at the same time beginning to direct operas and choreograph them at the Salzburg Festival. She worked on productions by Max Reinhardt. The two activities as director and choreographer became fused and indistinguishable in her future career, especially in Italy where she made her debut in 1937 at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and at the Teatro alla Scala. During the war, she was ballet director at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires and after the war, at La Scala, where she created new ballets such as Vita dell'uomo by Alberto Savinio (1958).

Since 1952, she devoted herself mainly to directing operas. Wallmann became the natural choice to direct premiere performances, from Darius Milhaud's David to La Scala's now-famed 1958 rendition of Turandot with Birgit Nilsson. Also at the Scala, she directed Maria Callas in Médée (conducted by Leonard Bernstein, 1953), Alceste (conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini, 1954), Norma (1955, the last few seconds of which were filmed), and Un ballo in maschera (1957).