Lucia Popp was born in Czechoslovakia in 1939. She studied music at the Bratislava Academy and, in 1963, made her debut in the same town as Queen of the Night in Mozart's Die Zauberfl├╢te (The Magic Flute). Within a few months she was engaged by the Vienna State Opera and the Salzburg Festival.
In 1966 she was at Covent Garden and she returned there frequently. 1967 saw her début at the Metropolitan Opera, New York. She specialised in the lighter Mozart and Strauss parts and also as Eva in Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Despite this, her repertoire also included many of the Italian lyric parts.
As the years passed she began to move to more mature roles; her Arabella (in R.StraussΓÇÖs opera) was much admired and in the 1980s she even took on Elsa in Wagner's Lohengrin.
As a performer she was 'unflappable'. She flew in at a few hours notice to replace an ailing colleague at the English National Opera, singing a role she knew in Italian while the rest of the cast sang in English. On another occasion she went on without rehearsal at Covent Garden and gave a wonderfully moving performance.
Her fine musicianship and control of voice also made her an accomplished lieder singer. Her silvery voice acquired an extra creaminess as it matured and her coloraturo was always impeccable. Tragically, she died of cancer in 1993, at the height of her career.
