Marianne Oswald "L'Art De Marianne Oswald: 1932-1937" (EPM Musique, 1992)
Born in Alsace-Lorraine, singer Marianne Oswald (nee Sarah Alice Bloch, 1901-1985) created her stage name with inspiration from a character created by Henrik Ibsen, the glum painter Oswald Alving, in the play "Ghosts." Known for her interpretations of Brecht and Weill, Oswald embraced the dark and the morose, which no doubt helped endear her to many of her famous friends, a circe that included Albert Camus, Jean Cocteau, Jacques Prevert, and Francis Poulenc. A Jewish girl who was orphaned in 1917, Oswald moved to Germany and was a cabaret singer in Weimar-era Berlin, and was known for her unusual, rough-edged singing voice, which was partly the result of a traumatic surgery to remove a goiter from her throat. Mlle. Oswald was notably one of the earliest interpreters of The Three Penny Opera, introducing it in translation to French audiences when she fled to Paris as the Nazis took power. She fled the Nazis again in 1939, cutting short her recording career to move to the United Stares for the duration of World War Two, returning to France in 1946. Though highly regarded in the prewar era, Marianne Oswald's searing, blunt vocal style didn't fit well with the sleeker, more pretty-sounding popular music of the late 'Forties and 'Fifties, and she found greater success as a film actress. This album collects songs originally released as 78s on the Columbia label between 1932-37, material that was also compiled on LPs in the 1950s and '70s. This CD edition is the most comprehensive collection of her work, although it doesn't include a small sprinkling of tunes released on her 1950s EP below.
Marianne Oswald "Le Dernier Poeme" (Philips Records, 1956) (EP)
