Anna Skryleva Leads Magdeburg Philharmonic to Opus Klassik Award

In a remarkable achievement, Anna Skryleva and the Magdeburg Philharmonic have won the prestigious Opus Klassik award for World Premiere Recording of the Year. This accolade was bestowed upon them for their outstanding recording of the opera Grete Minde by composer Eugen Engel.

Grete Minde is an opera based on the novella by Theodor Fontane, with a libretto by the Magdeburg author and radio pioneer Hans Bodenstedt. Engel, a textile tradesman by profession, composed this opera and entrusted the manuscript to his daughter when she fled to the United States in 1941. Tragically, Engel was murdered in the Sobibor extermination camp in 1943, and both he and his work were largely forgotten until recent years. The resurrection of Grete Minde is credited to Anna Skryleva, who discovered the opera in 2019.