Lucia Popp - Strauss II: DIE FLEDERMAUS, Adele's audition aria, Munich 1968, High D

THE SONGBIRD: Lucia Popp (1939 - 1993) was one of the most successful and popular sopranos of her generation. Popp originally intended to study acting, then began voice training as a mezzo. After her soprano range was discovered and developed, she made her debut in 1962 as Queen of the Night in Bratislava. She continued singing florid high soprano roles (Zerbinetta, Adele, Norina, Rosina, Gilda, etc.) until the mid-1970s when she transitioned into lyric soprano repertoire. As a result of this progression, Popp is one of a few sopranos who notably sang three roles in the same opera at different stages in her career, such as Barbarina, Susanna, and the Countess in "The Marriage of Figaro;" the First Boy, Queen of the Night, and Pamina in "The Magic Flute;" and Zerlina, Donna Elvira, and Donna Anna in "Don Giovanni." Similarly she sang two roles in another half-dozen operas, including "Die Fledermaus" having performed both Adele and Rosalinde, and made three studio recordings (twice as Adele, in 1968 and 1976, and once as Rosalinde in 1986). In 1993, she passed away of brain cancer at the of 54.
THE MUSIC: "Die Fledermaus" is the most performed operetta in the world to the point of essentially coming to define the genre. It premiered in Vienna in 1874, composed by Johann Strauss II to a libretto by Karl Haffner and Richard Genée that was in turn based on a French adaptation of an earlier German play. The work has two principal soprano roles: Rosalinde, a married woman of means, and her maid Adele, a coloratura soubrette. Adele’s second aria, "Spiel ich die unschuld vom lande" in Act Three, gives her a chance to audition her acting skills by impersonating three different stage roles: a country girl, a queen, and an aristocratic Parisienne.

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Quelle merveille!