Amalie Materna

Amalie Materna, a schoolteacher's daughter, sang operetta at Graz and at the Carltheater in Vienna before an audition took her straight into leading roles at the Hofoper, where she debuted in 1869 as Sélika in L'Africaine and stayed twenty-five years. In 1875 she created the title role of Goldmark's Die Königin von Saba, and Venus in the house's Tannhäuser. Wagner gave her Brünnhilde in the first complete Ring at Bayreuth in 1876 and Kundry in the first Parsifal in 1882, which she sang at every festival until 1891. She made her farewell as Elisabeth in 1894.