B/W photo of Leonie Rysanek by P.Rankin- Smith mounted on art paper /board and signed on the margin by Leonie Rysanek. The signature is authentic with provenance. Image size : 7.5 x 9.5 inches. Mount size: 11 x 14 inches. Leopoldine Rysanek (14 November 1926 – 7 March 1998) was an Austrian dramatic soprano. Rysanek was born in Vienna and made her operatic debut in 1949 in Innsbruck. In 1951 the Bayreuth Festival reopened and the new leader Wieland Wagner asked her to sing Sieglinde in Die Walküre. Her Metropolitan Opera debut came in 1959 as Lady Macbeth in Verdi's Macbeth, replacing Maria Callas . Over her career, she sang 299 performances of 24 roles there. She starred in productions of Verdi's Nabucco, in the title role of Ariadne auf Naxos by Richard Strauss, the Empress in Die Frau ohne Schatten, also by Strauss, and Janáček's Káťa Kabanová. She made her farewell there as the Countess in Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades in January 1996.

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