Friderica Derra de Moroda

Derra de Moroda was born in Bratislava, Kingdom of Hungary, the daughter of a Greek writer and a Hungarian art historian. The family moved to Munich after the death of their father. After a ballet education, she made her debut at the age of 14 on 22 February 1912 as a freelance dancer in the Vienna Secession.

From 1914 she was in England and founded her first own dance school in London. From 1918 she took lessons from Enrico Cecchetti for four years and then performed for the first time in Salzburg in 1923: A solo dance evening in the Great Hall of the Mozarteum delighted the audience. In 1936 she took on English citizenship.

In 1941 she took over the direction and artistic responsibility of the ballet of the National Socialist cultural organization Kraft durch Freude in Berlin, which toured regularly until 1944.[1][2][3] De Moroda was interned as an English citizen in a camp on Lake Constance towards the end of the war.

After the death of her sister Minka in December 1950, de Modera inherited the Villa Schmederer and in 1952 she established there a ballet school, which she ran until 1967 and which was attended above all by the members of the ballet from the Salzburger Landestheater, but also by the later solo dancer Margot Werner.

From 1960 onwards, she devoted herself increasingly to dance research and built up an extensive library of dance-specific literature. The estate of the Derra de Moroda Dance Archives is publicly accessible at the Institute for Musicology of the University of Salzburg.

On 15 June 1977 she was the first woman ever to be awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Salzburg.

In 1936, she rediscovered the original manuscript of the Nuova e curiosa scuola de' balli theatrali[4] by Gregorio Lambranzi.[5][6]

She was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1974.

Derra de Moroda died in Salzburg at age 81.

• Portrait on National Portrait Gallery
• Portrait on NPG
• Wer war Friderica Derra de Moroda? by Stephanie Schroedter on WorldCat