Martha Moedl, 89; Opera Singer Famed as Wagner Specialist

Martha Moedl, 89, a German opera singer who achieved international fame with her performance of Wagner in the 1950s and ‘60s, died Monday at a Stuttgart hospital after a long illness.

Moedl studied at the Nuremberg Conservatory and made her debut in 1942 in Remscheid, Germany, in the children’s opera “Hansel and Gretel.” She progressed from alto to mezzo-soprano at the Duesseldorf Opera after the war. She developed into a dramatic soprano with performances in Mozart’s “Cosi Fan Tutte” and “The Marriage of Figaro” and Bizet’s “Carmen.”

In 1949, she was engaged by the State Opera in Hamburg, where she began building her reputation as a Wagner specialist.

Moedl became a favorite at the world-renowned Richard Wagner festival in Bayreuth, where she appeared regularly from 1951 until 1967. In 1956, she made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York.

She continued performing well into her 80s, appearing in Tchaikovsky’s “The Queen of Spades” in Vienna in 1992 and in the same work in Mannheim, Germany, in 1999.