Christa Ludwig

Christa Ludwig (born 16 March 1928) is a German mezzo-soprano (now retired), distinguished for her performances of opera, Lieder, oratorio and other major religious works like masses and Passions, and solos contained in symphonic literature. Her career spanned from the late 1940s until the early 1990s. Ludwig was born in Berlin to a musical family; her father, Anton Ludwig, was a tenor and an operatic administrator, her mother, the mezzo-soprano Eugenie Besalla-Ludwig who sang the Aachen Opera during Herbert von Karajan's period as conductor.