Swiss soprano renowned for her beauty and singing of Strauss
When the Swiss soprano Lisa Della Casa, who has died aged 93, made her Covent Garden debut in the title role of Richard Strauss's Arabella on the Bavarian State Opera's visit to London in 1953, she won all hearts with the beauty of her singing and of her appearance. This role became her trademark, and when the Royal Opera decided to stage its own production of the work in 1965, Della Casa was, of course, the Arabella, with Georg Solti in the pit.
The producer was Rudolf Hartmann, who had done much to launch Della Casa's career on an international level. That career had begun in 1941 in the Swiss town of Solothurn-Biel, where she made her debut in the title role of Madama Butterfly. She joined the Zurich Opera House in 1943, appearing as the First Boy in The Magic Flute, later ascending to be Queen of the Night in the same opera, though eventually Pamina became her natural part in that work. During the second world war years, she sang a wide variety of roles at Zurich, including Gilda (Rigoletto), Butterfly, Antonia (The Tales of Hoffmann) and much Mozart.
When Della Casa undertook the secondary soprano part of Zdenka in Arabella at Zurich, Maria Cebotari appeared in the title role and it was Cebotari who engineered Della Casa's vital break, recommending her to the Salzburg festival for the role of Zdenka, which she sang in 1947, with Karl Böhm conducting.
Word quickly spread that a soprano of a very special calibre had appeared on the scene. As a result of her Salzburg appearance, Della Casa was engaged by the Vienna State Opera, which was to be her centre of operations for the rest of her career. Among her first roles there were Nedda (Pagliacci), Mimi (La Bohème), Gilda and Butterfly. Her next break came when Wilhelm Furtwängler asked for her to sing Marzelline in what was to become his legendary conducting of Fidelio at Salzburg in 1948.
A new production of Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos at Zurich introduced her to Hartmann, who then directed her in what became another of her most notable roles, the Countess in Strauss's Capriccio, at Salzburg in 1950. The following year she appeared for the first time in Britain, as Countess Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro at the Glyndebourne festival. Then, in 1952, she was acclaimed at La Scala, Milan, as Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier and Marzelline in Fidelio.
That year she was also Eva in Hartmann's staging of Die Meistersinger at the Bayreuth festival. For a singer still in her early 30s, she had well and truly made her mark. Another huge success was Cleopatra in Handel's Julius Caesar at Munich in 1955, the role of the flighty princess well tailored to Della Casa's vocal character, as recorded excerpts confirm. In November that year she undertook her first Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, having already sung Sophie and Octavian in that work.
She made her debut as Countess Almaviva at the Metropolitan in New York in 1953, and became a favourite there, returning for the next 11 seasons. Her other roles there included the Marschallin, Arabella, Eva, Elsa (Lohengrin) – and Saffi in Johann Strauss's The Gypsy Baron, in English, a throwback to her early career when she had sung operetta at Zurich. Indeed, her first recordings were in that genre, discs that announced a soprano with charm and a glorious voice.
Later, she attempted Chrysothemis in Richard Strauss's Elektra at Salzburg (1957) and the title part in his Salome at Munich (1961). Although the latter was a success, these heavier roles put undue pressure on her voice and she did not repeat them. She retired in 1974, without any fuss, after a performance in Vienna of Arabella, and lived happily with her husband, Dragan Debeljevic, whom she had married in 1949, at her castle on Lake Constance.
Della Casa had an air of great dignity combined with vulnerability on stage. Her acting was subtle, occasionally too fidgety, never melodramatic. Her voice emerged with the utmost naturalness, never a suggestion of effort, although late in her career she somewhat lost the exquisite ease at the top that made her Strauss singing so appealing.
She was also an accomplished concert singer and recitalist. In 1953, she made the first official recording of Strauss's Four Last Songs, which might have been written with her soaring, clear soprano in mind. Among other significant recordings were two of Arabella, of which the first, with Solti, is the better. Her Countess Almaviva adorns Erich Kleiber's classic recording of Le Nozze di Figaro. Her Fiordiligi is preserved on Böhm's Così Fan Tutte, and her Marzelline in a live Salzburg recording of that Fidelio under Furtwängler. She can be seen as well as heard as Donna Elvira in a 1955 film of Don Giovanni, with Furtwängler conducting. All these performances evince her sure sense of style, and her firm characterisation, but above all her lovely, even tone.
• Lisa Della Casa, soprano, born 2 February 1919; died 10 December 2012
• Alan Blyth died in 2007