Swiss opera diva Della Casa, famed for Strauss and Mozart performances, dies at 93

GENEVA – Swiss-born soprano Lisa Della Casa, a member of the Vienna State Opera whose performances of Mozart and Richard Strauss won her wide acclaim as one of the finest sopranos of her generation, has died at the age of 93.

The Vienna State Opera, where she had given more than 400 performances, said she died on Monday in the northern Swiss town of Muensterlingen.

Salzburg Festival President Helga Rabl-Stadler recalled Della Casa’s performances as “sublime moments for which she was celebrated by audiences and critics.”

Della Casa was born near the Swiss capital Bern in 1919 and later trained in Zurich. She first performed in 1941 in the Swiss town of Solothurn-Biel, in the title role of Madame Butterfly, and went on to perform on many of the world’s great opera stages including the Metropolitan Opera, the Royal Opera House and La Scala.

With her Covent Garden debut as Richard Strauss’s Arabella in 1953, she became identified for the role because of her singing and her beauty. That same year she debuted as Countess Almaviva at the Metropolitan in New York in 1953, where she also was a favourite.

After her retirement in 1974, she lived with her husband, Dragan Debeljevic, whom she married in 1949, at their castle on Lake Constance in northern Switzerland.