Roberta knee

Roberta Knie (born May 13, 1938 in Cordell , Oklahoma , † March 16, 2017 in Drexel Hill , Pennsylvania ) was a German-American opera singer ( soprano ) from the Knie circus dynasty . She was known for her strong and clear voice, which made her distinctive in many American and European opera houses throughout her career from the mid 1960s to the early 1980s. She was particularly known for her interpretation of Brünnhilde at the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth.

Life

education

Roberta Knie was born and raised in Cordell, Oklahoma, attended local high school and sang in the church choir. Knie studied at the University of Oklahoma with Elizabeth Parham , Judy Bounds Coleman and Eva Turner, among others . She then moved to Austria to study with Max Lorenz at the Mozarteum in Salzburg before making her debut at the Hagen Theater in 1964 as Elisabeth im Tannhäuser .

Career

From 1966 to 1969 she was part of the Stadttheater Freiburg , she then moved to Graz from 1969 to 1972 , where she sang roles such as Leonore in Beethoven's Fidelio and title roles in Puccini's Tosca and Richard Strauss' Salome . She then worked at the Cologne Opera and the Zurich Opera House . In 1973 she bought the Sonnenvilla in Laßnitzhöhe together with her friend and mentor Judy Bounds Coleman , when it returned to the USA in 1977, she became the sole owner.

1974 was a milestone in her career, she jumped in for a colleague at the last minute as Brünnhilde in Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen at the Bayreuth Festival . The performance was a complete success both with the critics and the audience and increased their level of awareness decisively and led to contracts with well-known opera houses in the following years. In 1974 she sang the Ring des Nibelungen at the Opéra National de Lyon and appeared at the Teatro San Carlo .

In 1975 Roberta Knie made her operatic debut in America with the Dallas Opera as Isolde in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde . In 1976 she appeared in the so-called Jahrhundertring at the Wagner Festival and sang as Brünnhilde at the San Francisco Opera in Die Walküre . She also appeared for the first time at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in the title role of Elektra von Strauss.

In the next few years she sang at various major opera houses, such as the Vienna State Opera , Hamburg State Opera , Bavarian State Opera , State Theater Stuttgart , Deutsche Oper Berlin , Nationaltheater Mannheim , Opéra National du Rhin , Royal Opera (Stockholm) , Teatro Regio di Parma , Teatro Nacional de Sao Carlos . Welsh National Opera , Opéra de Montréal , Teatro Colón and the Lyric Opera of Chicago .

Although she was mainly known for Wagner roles, including Senta in Der Fliegende Holländer , Elsa in Lohengrin , Sieglinde and several of the Valkyries in Die Walküre , she also sang numerous other roles, such as Donna Anna in Mozart's Don Giovanni , Elektra in Mozart's Idomeneo , the Marschallin in Strauss Der Rosenkavalier and Leonore both in La forza del destino and in Il trovatore .

In 1981 Roberta Knie fell ill with viral pneumonia, which she had to cure until 1984. In 1991 Roberta Knie in Graz , where she taught at the University of Art, was diagnosed with a detached retina. To prevent possible stress-related blindness, she ended her operatic career. In 2000 she survived colon cancer.

literature

• Wayne Boothe: Washita County (Images of America (Arcadia Publishing)) . Arcadia Publ. (Sc) 2007, ISBN 0-7385-5151-1
• Birgit Nilsson, Jeannie Williams: Jon Vickers: A Hero's Life . Northeastern Univ. Pr. 2007, ISBN 1-55553-674-3 p. 258
• David Patrick Stearns interview with Roberta Knie published in the Philadelphia Inquirer August 2004

Web links

• Roberta Knie at Operissimo  on the basis of the Great Singer Lexicon
• Roberta Knie in the Bavarian Musicians' Lexicon Online (BMLO)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Obituary (English) , accessed on April 6, 2017
2. ^ Obituary in the Tamino Klassikforum , accessed on December 6, 2018
3. ^ Wayne Boothe: Washita County (Images of America (Arcadia Publishing)) , p. 105