Brunnhilde, Wotan's naughty daughter, was the perfect role for Rita Hunter, the diva from Wallasey, in the north-west of England, who died on April 29th aged 67. The whole point about Brunnhilde is that she is human and wilful even before she is deprived of her immortal status.
The fact that Rita Hunter, at 20-stone, would have been quite a challenge for any horses in the Ride Of The Valkyries did not remotely disqualify her from shining memorably in the role at London's Coliseum in 1973.
Rita Hunter had a beautiful, and highly individual, voice of formidable strength, as well as a lovely, irrepressibly cheerful smile. But the sound she made was not just sweet, and the smile masked a certain lack of realism. There could be a mewling, almost feline, twang in her lower register.
She became distinctly less co-operative as her career took off. The voice could develop a sufficiently admonitory timbre from time to time, without which she could not have compassed the tragic sentiment that is essential in the Ring. But the limitations of her career demonstrated all too clearly that the conductor Reginald Goodall's musical preparation and inspiring leadership had been crucial factors in setting her up as a credible star.
Goodall was her real Svengali - not Eva Turner, from whom she acquired a few distinctive vocal habits, when she took lessons from her for six months. "What I got from Eva was not so much vocal progress as a mental attitude to things," she said.
"I had a very piercing sound, which was fine and loud and raised the roof. But I knew there was something else I wanted, a round, nice warm tone - because I was a great lover of Tebaldi." She quite quickly turned her back on the sorts of demands that Goodall represented, though treasuring, perhaps too confidently, his brilliant advice to her: "Don't move. Do it with your face."
Her vocal gift was indeed rare, but not sufficient to compensate for the disadvantages of her personality - for her cheerful, insouciant arrogance as an artist, and a growing disinclination to work hard enough at musical preparation, and at the appropriately polished and imaginative theatricality.
What was wonderful about that initial Brunnhilde was that it triumphed over all the many problems of her shape and mobility - though she was quite capable of being delicate in her movements, as well as dramatically urgent. But in the end, and quite quickly, the international invitations stopped coming because the voice, by itself, was not enough.
For those who listened and longed for her to realise her enormous promise as a Wagnerian star, it was depressing to notice how casually she broke up phrases to seize a breath, how irresponsibly she would just get by.
Her alibi for not trying harder was the sense that the glandular disorder which made her so huge - her Bellini, in New York, was greeted with the headline "Enorma" - was something she could not help, and it was size that was stopping her being cast by opera house managements.
Her first singing lessons came from Olive Lloyd, who conducted the local pantomime society orchestra, and who taught her to hold her breath for "a long, long time".
She joined the Sadler's Wells chorus in 1954, aged 21, and after a couple of years - and nothing more exciting than singing one of the bridesmaids in Figaro - transferred to the Carl Rosa company.
When the Carl Rosa merged with Sadler's Wells, she got a six months' study grant with Eva Turner, who once declared she would never make a singer, and would have to scrub floors for a living.
Then she went to her husband's teacher Redvers Llewellyn, and - back on the Sadler's Wells books - began to get roles: Marcellina, in Figaro, whose single and very difficult aria gave her a big chance, and, in 1964, her first Wagner, Senta, in Flying Dutchman. She was also Odabella, in Verdi's Attila, and Musetta, in Boheme. The birth, in 1968, of her daughter, Mairwyn, coincided with her being sacked by Sadler's Wells. She was quite quickly welcomed back, though, since she was Goodall's Brunnhilde in the making.
In 1979, she was supposed to be Turandot to Luciano Pavarotti's Calaf at the New York Metropolitan Opera, but, following a stagehands' strike, she jetted off to do Nabucco in Sydney, where she was to be offered a whole roster of big roles. The Australian Opera was once said to be considering casting Joan Sutherland as Josephine in HMS Pinafore, opposite Rita Hunter as Buttercup. However, of that suggestion, she said: "I would hate to be considered a large funny lady." Her autobiography was Wait Till The Sun Shines Nellie (15); and her triumph as Brunnhilde in the Goodall Ring is still available on CD.
Rita Hunter is survived by her daughter, Mairwyn.
Rita Nellie Hunter: born 1933; died, April 2001