Rosa Sucher (23 February 1849 – 16 April 1927), née Hasselbeck, was a German

opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librett ...

tic

dramatic soprano A dramatic soprano is a type of operatic soprano with a powerful, rich, emotive voice that can sing over, or cut through, a full orchestra. Thicker vocal folds in dramatic voices usually (but not always) mean less agility than lighter voices but a ...

renowned for her Wagnerian performances.

Life

Sucher was born in

Velburg Velburg is a town in the district of Neumarkt in Bavaria, Germany. It is situated 17 km southeast of Neumarkt in der Oberpfalz, and 39 km northwest of Regensburg. Castle The town of Velburg has a castle ruin which occupies the highe ...

. Her debut occurred in Munich in 1871 as Waltraute in ''

Die Walküre (; ''The Valkyrie''), WWV 86B, is the second of the four music dramas that constitute Richard Wagner's ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'' (English: ''The Ring of the Nibelung''). It was performed, as a single opera, at the National Theatre Munich on ...

'' and engagements followed in Berlin and Leipzig. She married Josef Sucher (1844–1908), a well-known conductor and composer in 1876, when he was conductor at the

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...

city theatre. Frau Sucher soon became famous for her interpretations of

Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...

's operatic roles, with her seasons in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

in 1882 and 1892 proving her great capacity both as singer and actress. In 1886 and 1888, she sang at Germany's

Bayreuth Bayreuth (, ; bar, Bareid) is a town in northern Bavaria, Germany, on the Red Main river in a valley between the Franconian Jura and the Fichtelgebirge Mountains. The town's roots date back to 1194. In the 21st century, it is the capital of U ...

, and in later years she was principally associated with the opera stage in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

, retiring in 1903. She died at

Eschweiler Eschweiler (, Ripuarian: ) is a municipality in the district of Aachen in North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany on the river Inde, near the German-Belgian-Dutch border, and about east of Aachen and west of Cologne. History * Celts (fir ...

. Her rendering of the part of Isolde in Wagner's opera was especially acclaimed. Her other roles included Agathe,

Euryanthe ''Euryanthe'' ( J. 291, Op. 81) is a German grand heroic-romantic opera by Carl Maria von Weber, first performed at the Theater am Kärntnertor in Vienna on 25 October 1823.Brown, p. 88 Though acknowledged as one of Weber's most important operas, ...

, Elsa, Eva, Brünnhilde, Kundry, and Desdemona in

Otello ''Otello'' () is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Arrigo Boito, based on Shakespeare's play ''Othello''. It was Verdi's penultimate opera, first performed at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan, on 5 February 1887. Th ...

. Unfortunately, she left no gramophone recordings of her singing.

Sources

;Attribution *''The Oxford Dictionary of Opera'', by John Warrack and Ewan West (1992), 782 pages, *

External links

Gallery of Players from the Illustrated American, Volume 1, Issues 1–9; sourced Googlebooks Retrieved December 2, 2014
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sucher, Rosa 1849 births 1927 deaths People from Neumarkt (district) German operatic sopranos 19th-century German women opera singers