Leonie Rysanek; Longtime Opera Star

Leonie Rysanek, an internationally lauded soprano who graced opera stages from Vienna to Los Angeles in more than 2,100 performances over nearly half a century, has died. She was 71.

Rysanek, who retired less than two years ago, died Saturday night in her native Vienna, apparently of cancer.

Best known for singing the roles of Wagner and Richard Strauss heroines, Rysanek made her last appearance in Los Angeles in 1994 as Klytamnestra in Strauss’ “Elektra.”

She ended her American performances and a 37-year association with the New York Metropolitan Opera in early 1996 as the countess in Tchaikovsky’s “Pikovaya Dama” (The Queen of Spades). After that 299th Met appearance, the audience chanted her name and gave her a 23-minute standing ovation.

“I love you. Bless you. Goodbye,” she told the crowd. After singing Klytamnestra in Salzburg that summer, Rysanek retired.

Her career outlasted that of most operatic sopranos--from 1949, when she first earned fame as Sieglinde in Wagner’s “Die Walkure” at the Bayreuth Festival, until she retired shortly before her 70th birthday.

“Rysanek left the Met in amazingly good form,” former Times music critic Martin Bernheimer wrote in 1996. “[Her] tone remained fresh, even lustrous, and, wherever possible, she mustered poignant lyricism to counterbalance the macabre nuances.”

Bernheimer, who covered Rysanek for many years in New York and San Francisco as well as in Los Angeles after its opera company was developed, often criticized Rysanek as inconsistent and undisciplined. Nevertheless, he repeatedly noted that she was incomparable in four signature roles--Senta in Wagner’s “The Flying Dutchman,” Lady Macbeth in Verdi’s “Macbeth,” the Kaiserin in Richard Strauss’ “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” and the protagonist of Strauss’ “Aegyptische Helena.”

Her Senta and Lady Macbeth, Bernheimer once wrote, “have been unequaled in our time.” Like many critics, Bernheimer praised her in her maturity for retaining the vocal and acting ability of a singer half her age.

Despite her long and prolific career, Rysanek left a scant recorded legacy.

“I was never happy making recordings,” she told The Times in a 1994 interview. “At the microphone, they would say, ‘Miss Rysanek, you move too much. Please stay still. Don’t do this, don’t do that.’ So it made me tense.”

Rysanek made her American debut in 1956 with the San Francisco Opera in “The Flying Dutchman.” Her first performances in Los Angeles were also with the San Francisco Opera at the Shrine Auditorium.

After the Los Angeles Music Center Opera came into being, Rysanek appeared as Kabanicha in its 1988 staging of Janacek’s “Kat’a Kabanova.”

She made her New York Met debut in 1959 in her renowned interpretation of Lady Macbeth. Over the years, she also performed in the major opera houses of Vienna, Paris, Milan, Munich, Berlin and Hamburg.

At the time of her death, Rysanek was acting president of the Vienna Festival. She was an honorary member of the Vienna State Opera, where she sang 532 performances.

Rysanek married twice--Rudolf Grossmann, whom she divorced, and her surviving husband, Ernst Ludwig Gausmann. She is also survived by a brother and a sister, Kurt and Lotte Rysanek, and a stepson.