Lucia Popp: Queen of Night, Maiden of Light

Lucia Popp (born Lucia Poppová) entered the Academy in Bratislava primarily to study drama. Her voice was a mezzo-soprano but her musical lessons developed a high upper register to such a degree that her professional debut was as Queen of the Night in Mozart’s opera Die Zauberflöte in Bratislava. In 1963 Otto Klemperer heard her and she duly recorded this role with him in 1971. Also in 1963 Herbert von Karajan invited her to join the State Opera in Vienna where her first role was Barbarina in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. In June 1965 she recorded the soprano role in Orff’s Carmina Burana with Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos who, at the age of 31, had already made a fine impression as a conductor of choral works. She made her debut at Covent Garden as Oscar in Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera in 1966 and in New York in the following year as Queen of the Night. That year also saw her making her first solo recital recording – a selection of Handel and Mozart arias conducted by Georg Fischer. The soubrette coloratura roles were then gradually replaced by lyric ones during the 1970s and ten years later these were supplemented by heavier roles such as Eva in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg; (she also agreed to record two roles she had not performed on stage: Elisabeth in Wagner’s Tannhäuser and the eponym in Strauss’s Daphne). As a result of this vocal progression, she sang various roles in the same opera at different stages in her career – notably recording the role of Pamina, the Queen of the Night’s daughter, ten years after recording that of her mother! Besides opera she loved Lieder and she made recital discs of Schubert and Strauss for EMI Classics as well as the latter’s Vier letzte Lieder with Klaus Tennstedt. Furthermore her stunning good looks, radiant smile and bubbling personality also meant she was ideal in operetta. In December 1989 Czechoslovakia finally threw off the yoke of Soviet domination and at a celebratory concert in the Wenceslas Hall in Prague’s Castle she was invited to sing the eponym’s “Song to the Moon” from Dvorák’s Rusalka. Tragedy for her, alas, was just round the corner as she was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour and died in Munich a mere four days after her 54th birthday on 16th November 1993. She was buried in Cintorín Slávicie údolie, Bratislava, which is now the resting-place of modern-day Slovak heroes including Alexander Dubcek.