Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf: Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, who has died aged 90, was one of the most distinguished and influential singers of the 20th century. She was rightly described by her husband, record producer Walter Legge, as a "bloody marvel" days before his death when - already in her 60s - she was giving a recital in Zurich.
The pristine beauty of her lyric soprano and the charm of her person, combined with hard work and innate intelligence, lent her performances a compelling authority, even though some, not unjustly, considered that artifice sometimes replaced art in her interpretations of both opera and lieder. But in these fields, she gained extraordinary acclaim over 2½ decades.
From the outset of her career, she divided her time between the operatic stage and the concert platform, becoming equally adept in both worlds. Her opera repertory latterly concentrated for the most part on Mozart and Richard Strauss. She became the leading exponent of lieder among female singers of her generation.
She was at her very best in choral works. Her Bach, as evinced in her recordings of that composer, was impeccable in voice and style. She floated the soprano solo of Brahms's Ein Deutsches Requiem with calm loveliness. Only in the Verdi Requiem did she seem a shade out of her element. On stage, Schwarzkopf lent her strong, often affecting personality to very specific roles.
She was, in Mozart, a gracious Countess Almaviva (Le Nozze di Figaro), a formidable Fiordiligi (Cosi Fan Tutte), whose vocal histrionics never fazed her, and an emotionally overwrought Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni), her characterisations always seconded by her technical skill. In Strauss, she was a mercurial Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, a little artificial for some tastes, and a witty Countess Madeleine in Capriccio, the composer's operatic swansong.
Eventually she confined herself to these parts, but earlier in her career her repertory was far more extensive. At the Berlin Stadtische Oper, which she joined in 1938, she was famed for her soubrette roles - Adele (Die Fledermaus), Musetta (La Boheme) and the immensely taxing Zerbinetta (Ariadne auf Naxos) among them. When she moved to the Vienna State Opera, from which her international fame derived, in 1942, her debut role was Rosina (Il Barbiere di Siviglia), still in the soubrette area, but by the time the war was over and the State Opera made its famous visit to Covent Garden in 1947, she had graduated to Marzelline in Fidelio and Donna Elvira.
Both made a distinct impression - so much so that she was asked to join the nascent Covent Garden Opera Company, for which, between 1947 and 1952, she sang, all in English, not only Pamina (Magic Flute), Susanne, Eva (Mastersingers), Sophie (her earlier part in Der Rosenkavalier) from the German repertory, but also Violetta (La Traviata), Gilda (Rigoletto), Mimi (La Boheme), Butterfly and Massenet's Manon - an extraordinary achievement both for its range and for the fact that she was singing in a foreign language.
It was at about this time Legge became interested in her both musically and personally, although he later realised that she had been in the chorus when he recorded The Magic Flute with Sir Thomas Beecham in Berlin in 1938. They were married in 1953 and he became a profound influence on her career.
As Legge was one of EMI's two chief producers, Schwarzkopf had an open sesame to make virtually as many recordings as she liked.
Schwarzkopf was born in Jarocin, now in Poland; at the time of her birth, it was in eastern Germany and known as Jarotschin. The highly educated daughter of a classics master, she entered the Berlin Hochschule fur Musik in 1934, studying at first with Lula Mysz-Gmeiner, a celebrated lieder interpreter. However, Schwarzkopf claimed she learnt much more from Maria Ivogun, who in her own career shared much of her pupil's early coloratura repertory.
Schwarzkopf gained her first knowledge of lieder from Ivogun and from Ivogun's second husband, accompanist Michael Raucheisen, who recruited Schwarzkopf for his ambitious wartime project of recording whole swathes of the lieder repertory. These were preserved on early tape and issued later on disc. They show Schwarzkopf's voice in its youthful prime.
At the same time, Raucheisen partnered her in her first lieder recital, in the Beethoven Saal, Berlin, in 1942. At this time, the singer reportedly had connections with the Nazis, revealed in a controversial biography that appeared in 1996. The revelations, denied by her, caused a considerable stir.
She was made a doctor of music by Cambridge University in 1976 and became a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1992.
Olga Maria Elisabeth Schwarzkopf: born December 9th, 1915; died August 2nd, 2006