Mascia Predit

Her recordings are rare, but a new release of her work was created by Philadelphia sound archivist Ward Marston on his personal label as of 2016. Opera Delaware music director Jeffrey Miller helped to find earlier recordings for use in the project.

Predit moved to the United States, teaching voice at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. She eventually retired in Wilmington, Delaware before moving to a nursing home in Baltimore where she died on October 7, 2001.

Predit was finally allowed to leave Latvia in 1970. She appeared in a cameo in Luchino Visconti's film Death in Venice (1971). As an aristocratic Russian tourist, she sings a haunting Mussorgsky Lullaby to a deserted beach. She was credited as "Masha Predit".

A 1952 monophonic recording of Predit singing songs by Modest Mussorgsky with orchestra conducted by Igor Markevitch, was re-released by Audite in 2009.

Predit apparently remarried in Italy in the 1950s. Some time later, she returned to Latvia where she hoped to see her son. Once again she was trapped by borders: this time she was not allowed to leave Latvia. She was eventually presumed legally dead in Italy.

Predit went to London, England where she continued her singing career. During the 1940s and 1950s she recorded on the labels Cetra and HMV.

She was included in The Russian and Slavonic Schools section of the classical collection The Record of Singing, Volume 4: From 1939 to the End of the 78 Era.

Mascia Predit (December 21, 1912 in Dvinsk, Latvia, Russian Empire – October 7, 2001 in Baltimore) was a Latvian actress and opera singer. Although she was acclaimed as a singer for her strong soprano voice and intense interpretation, her career and her personal life were disrupted by World War II and its aftermath. Her recordings are rare, but several have been re-released.

Born December 21, 1912, in Dvinsk (now, Daugavpils), Latvia, Predit is described as having grown up in an upper-class home in Riga, Latvia, before World War II. Interested in becoming an actress, she studied with Constantin Stanislavski in Moscow. After her singing voice was discovered by Feodor Chaliapin, a Russian bass, she studied with Salvatore Salvati in Switzerland and Rosina Storchio in Milan, Italy. She toured in Poland, Austria, Switzerland and Italy. In 1946 she sang the role of Ellen Orford in the first broadcast of Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes on Italian radio.

Italian artist Giovanni Omiccioli (Rome 1901-1975) made a portrait of Mascia Predit in 1952 (oil on canvas 50 x 40 cm); this work is published in a book