Lucia Popp made her stage debut as a singer at age 23 at the Bratislava Opera singing the role of the Queen of the Night in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. In 1963 Herbert von Karajan heard her sing and engaged her on the spot to sing with the Vienna State Opera company.
Her first appearances were so successful that before long she was offered a three-year contract with the Vienna State Opera. She started her engagement there in 1963, and became famous overnight singing the Queen of the Night, a role in which she was considered unsurpassed. In 1963 she sang also Barbarina in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro at the same opera house.
Lucia Popp made her debut at Covent Garden Opera in London in 1966 as Oscar in Un ballo in maschera, and she has since performed there regularly.
She sang at the Metropolitan Opera in New York for the first time in February 1967, in Marc Chagall’s production of Die Zauberflöte
The audience at La Scala in Milan discovered her in 1976 in the role of Sophie in Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, conducted by Carlos Kleiber.
I am fortunate to have heard Ms. Popp in several live performances during 1950.
Ms. Popp died in Munich in 1993.
Here is this amazing singer in the Aria “Ach ich Fuehl’s” from Mozart’s Zauberfloete:
