Biography

Elfi von Dassanowsky, the Austrian film producer, Hollywood vocal coach, and international arts consultant, had an important career as a pianist and opera singer in postwar Europe. She played an especially prominent role in the cultural rehabilitation of Austria following the defeat of the country's Nazi rulers. Born in Vienna to an aristocratic family, von Dassanowsky became a protégée of Emil von Sauer, a former pupil of Franz Liszt and Anton Rubinstein. With von Sauer's support, she became the youngest female ever admitted to Vienna's Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst at the age of 16. There she developed her soprano and mezzo soprano range and was also trained in the Paderewski piano technique.

She debuted in 1946 as Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro at St. Pölten Stadttheater. Her career as a pianist and opera singer continued throughout the '40s and '50s, including appearances as Agathe in Der Freischütz, Mimì in La bohème, and many other roles in opera and operetta. She gained further visibility as a broadcast announcer for the BBC and British Forces Broadcasting in Vienna and produced many command performances for the Allied High Command there. (Austria and Vienna, like Germany and Berlin, were partitioned after the war into American, British, French, and Soviet military occupation zones and were so governed until 1955.) After these and many other activities in postwar cultural diplomacy, she emigrated in the '50s and eventually settled in New York, where she conducted master classes in voice and piano. In 1962, she and her family moved to Los Angeles where she entered business and became a music coach to film actors, a career that she began during the war years in Vienna in association with such actors as Curd Jürgens. Women at that time still faced formidable barriers on the production side of Hollywood's motion picture industry, however, and she was unable to continue the pioneering role she had played as a female film producer in Europe. She is still active in Los Angeles as an arts consultant and a promoter of Austrian music and film culture. (See her entry in the All Movie Guide.) ~ Gregory Walker, All Music Guide