Photo: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SAShe recorded the Queen of the Night with Klemperer at 24, all icy glitter, then came back two decades later as the warmest Pamina on record. Very few singers have owned both sides of this opera.
She came out of Bratislava, joined the Vienna State Opera in her early twenties, and spent three decades refining the art of sounding effortless. The late roles grew warmer as the voice did; she died in Munich at just fifty-four, and colleagues still speak of her the way audiences spoke of her singing.