Martha M÷dl, the German soprano, who died on December 16th aged 89, was renowned as one of the most compelling singing actresses of the 20th century, whose appearance in a wide variety of parts, but in particular in the heroic roles in Wagner's operas, won wide acclaim over a career that lasted, incredibly, more than 50 years; she was still appearing in small character roles when in her 80s.
She came to international recognition in the first postwar staging of Wagner's Parsifal (1951) at the Bayreuth Festival. The staging by the composer's grandson Wieland stripped the work of much of the clutter that had encumbered pre-war productions and presented it, on a bare stage, as psychological drama.
A key element in this achievement was Martha M÷dl's searing portrayal of the temptress Kundry, as riveting in her seductive guise as in her remorse. Much of that is conveyed by voice alone in the recording of the event, now available on CD. She was undoubtedly helped in her reading by the collaboration with the great Wagnerian conductor Hans Knappertsbusch.
She was just as impressive the following year at Bayreuth in Wieland's equally revelatory Tristan und Isolde, this time under Karajan's elemental baton.
As Brⁿnnhilde, in The Ring, she was hardly less effective, though the long role sorely tested a voice that could at times be intractable. None the less, her recording of the role under FurtwΣngler for Rome Radio in 1953 is remarkable for its dramatic truthfulness.
Martha M÷dl was born in Nuremberg, where she studied at the music conservatory. She began her career as a mezzo, engaged first at Remschied, then at Dⁿsseldorf, where she sang mezzo roles such as Dorabella, Octavian, the Composer in Ariadne auf Naxos and Carmen. It was in the last-named role that she first appeared at Covent Garden in the 1949-'50 season, and was praised for her individual interpretation.
In 1949 she joined Hamburg Opera, where she sang both mezzo and soprano parts. She also sang a riveting Lady Macbeth in Verdi's opera at Berlin in 1950, a souvenir of which can be heard on disc.
Other appearances in Britain were with the Hamburg and Stuttgart companies at the Edinburgh Festival, but in 1972, at 60, she returned to Covent Garden with the Bavarian State Opera, making a typically arresting effect in the small part of the Housekeeper in Richard Strauss's Die Schweigsame Frau.
She was a favourite at the Vienna State Opera, where she sang Leonore in Fidelio at the reopening of the war-damaged house in 1955, and Karajan invited her to sing Klytemnestra in Strauss's Elektra at the Salzburg Festival in 1964, with her great contemporary and friend Astrid Varnay in the title role. This is also preserved on disc, and was another role she recorded under FurtwΣngler's baton.
By the end of the 1950s, the strain of singing her heavy repertory began to tell on her voice, and she wisely returned to mezzo territory. In that guise she made her dΘbut at the Metropolitan in New York in the 1959-'60 season as the Nurse in Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten, another role in which her extraordinary powers as an actress were to the fore, as they were again as Klytemnestra in the same composer's Elektra.
Latterly she created a number of cameo roles in new works, such as Die Mumie (the mummy) in Reimann's Gespenstersonate (after Strindberg's Ghost Sonata), a role she sang again as recently as last year. Indeed, she was throughout her career a great advocate of modern opera.
Among other roles she made very much her own at the end of her career were Grandmother Burya in Janβcek's Jenufa and the old Countess in Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades, which she sang in Vienna to celebrate her 80th birthday.
A book of conversations with the diva, So War Mein Weg Empfohlen, was recently published, and five years ago she appeared in an extraordinary film, Love's Debris, in which she and other divas reminisced nostalgically about their careers. It is a curiously moving document. In it she commented: "I don't myself know how I sing."
The term "old trouper" might have been coined to describe the dedicated, characterful work of Martha M÷dl. Whenever she was on stage, she was the centre of attention. The intensity of her declamation, allied to an exceptionally expressive timbre, in everything she undertook, was the source of her success.
She was unmarried, saying that her life was devoted to her art, leaving no time over for a private life. Perhaps that explained her total emotional commitment on stage.
Martha M÷dl: born 1912; died, December 2001