By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 4, 2006

Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, 90, an opera luminary celebrated as one of the finest coloratura sopranos of her generation but whose early membership in the Nazi Party long haunted her reputation, died Aug. 3 at her home in Schruns, Austria. No cause of death was reported.

From the 1930s to the 1970s, few opera stars were as highly prized for their interpretations of Strauss and Mozart, and Ms. Schwarzkopf was one of the leading promoters of German lieder, or art songs, of Bach, Schubert and Hugo Wolf.

As a coloratura soprano, she mastered the very highest octaves with remarkable precision and breath control. Adding to her allure were her stunning Teutonic looks and a commanding stage presence. She had long and fruitful collaborations with conductor Herbert von Karajan (although she later spoke derisively of his personality) and had powerful backing from her husband, EMI Records executive Walter Legge.

Ms. Schwarzkopf's admirers included pianist Arthur Rubinstein, who professed to appreciate lieder through her, and opera authority J.B. Steane, who once wrote after seeing her perform, "What one hears is the most beautiful legato, the finest of lightenings, the least fussy and most sensitive of interpretations."

Yet she could be a polarizing figure, musically and politically. She famously chose all but one of her own recordings when asked to compile her selections for the Desert Island Discs program, and composer Robin Holloway once criticized her for "narcissism to the point of incest."

Ms. Schwarzkopf's ambition was at the core of her most enduring controversy -- the extent of her Nazi Party involvement during World War II. She was a particular favorite of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and later dismissed her party membership as necessary for career advancement, "akin to joining a union."

Olga Maria Elisabeth Frederike Schwarzkopf was born Dec. 9, 1915, to Prussian parents in what is now Jarocin, Poland.

Her family later moved to Magdeburg, Germany, where at age 12 she made her opera debut in a school production. In 1934, she was accepted into the Berlin High School for Music, where she trained as a coloratura soprano.

In 1938, she made her first professional stage appearance at the Deutsches Opernhaus in Charlottenburg, near Berlin. She had a small part as a flower maiden in Richard Wagner's "Parsifal," but she impressed many when, given the role on short notice, she mastered it overnight.

This led to better parts, among them the role of Zerbinetta in "Ariadne auf Naxos" in 1940. Hungarian soprano Maria Ivogun, whom Strauss had originally chosen for the role, saw her and became a mentor. She trained Ms. Schwarzkopf for lieder recitals and pushed her through an exhaustive schedule.

Ms. Schwarzkopf had obscured her Nazi affiliation by the end of the war and was permitted by Allied military officials to perform abroad. In 1946, she was hired at the Vienna State Opera Co., where she was Rosina in "The Barber of Seville" and Gilda in "Rigoletto." She also made acclaimed performances at the Salzburg Festival in Austria and the Bayreuth Festival in Germany, the latter a major staging ground for Wagner's operas.

At La Scala in Milan, she was a sensation as the flirtatious Marschallin in Strauss's comic opera "Der Rosenkavalier," which became one of her signature pieces. On the same stage in 1951, composer Igor Stravinsky cast her as Anne Trulove in his world premiere of "The Rake's Progress."

She made her London debut at the Royal Opera House in 1947 as Donna Elvira in Mozart's "Don Giovanni." She won the attention of Legge, a recording director at EMI and a founder of London's Philharmonia Orchestra. He was to many a Svengali figure who was rigorous, to the point of being vicious, about molding her career and approaching a line of song.

They married in 1953 and later taught master classes together at the Juilliard School in New York City. He also played a major role in expanding her popularity through an exclusive recording contract with EMI, where she performed major works by Strauss, Bach, Brahms and Mahler. In time, she became the company's best-selling classical artist, after violinist Itzhak Perlman and opera singer Maria Callas.

At her American debut in New York in 1953, she chose a selection of lieder and two years later sang Marschallin with the San Francisco Opera Co. During the next 15 years, until her operatic retirement, she focused on perfecting a much-reduced repertoire, including Marschallin, Donna Elvira, the Countess in "The Marriage of Figaro" and Fiordiligi in "Cosi fan tutte."

Legge died in 1979, and Ms. Schwarzkopf largely enjoyed a comfortable retirement, teaching master classes as many of her early works were reissued to critical acclaim. In 1981, a Viennese music historian published documents from the National Archives in Washington showing a greater involvement in the Nazi Party than she had previously admitted.

Although this stirred up a past that Ms. Schwarzkopf had kept deliberately sketchy, British musicologist Alan Jefferson published in 1996 his definitive account of her Nazi Party membership. He wrote of her appearances in German propaganda films, visits to troops on the Eastern Front during the war and what he concluded was the fast rise in her career through connections to German leaders, including Goebbels.

Whatever her true involvement, her past did little to dim her popularity. She was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1992, and her recordings continued to be esteemed by critics and music buyers alike.

Her most personal statement on her wartime legacy came in a letter she wrote to the New York Times in 1983: "It was akin to joining a union, and exactly for the same reason: to have a job. Could it possibly be that some of us merely worked hard to become decent singers?"

She went on: "My father -- a victim of Nazi procedure himself, having refused to join and consequently having lost his position of oberstudiendirektor (principal) at the Cottbus Gymnasium (high school) -- urged me to join: Nothing was more important to him than my singing."

"Although it was never in my repertoire, I cannot help quoting Tosca: 'Vissi d'arte . . . ' ('I lived for art')."

She has no immediate survivors.