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While best known for her Wagner and Strauss, soprano Leonie Rysanek was also greatly admired in the dramatic Verdi roles, especially Lady Macbeth. She had a rich, full voice that could cut through heavy orchestration, but was also capable of fine piano singing. Her first career ambition was drama, and she was known for her formidable stage and vocal acting, though some critics commented unfavorably on her occasional disruptions of the vocal line and extramusical effects to emphasize a dramatic point. Modestly, she declined offers of the heaviest Strauss and Wagner such as Isolde and Brünnhilde, declaring that Birgit Nilsson's renditions were the ideal. (Compare that to the feuding of many divas and divos!) Vocally, her middle was a weak point through the early years of her career, though it strengthened with time.

She studied at the Vienna Conservatory with Alfred Jerger and Rudolf Grossman, and made her opera debut at the Innsbruck opera in 1949 as Agathe in Weber's Der Freischütz. Her feminine and yet powerfully-voiced Sieglinde at her Bayreuth Festival debut in 1951 brought her to world attention. She made her Covent Garden debut during a Vienna State Opera tour as Danae in Strauss' Der Liebe der Danae in 1953. Her United States debut was in San Francisco in 1956 as Senta in Wagner's The Flying Dutchman. Her Met debut was in 1959, replacing Maria Callas as Verdi's Lady Macbeth, though she was scheduled to appear later that season as Verdi's Aida. Though she had to win over a hostile audience, she became a Met favorite and for the rest of her career, was a regular there as well as in Vienna. In 1981, she starred in Götz Friedrich's film of Elektra, conducted by Karl Bohm and co-starring with Astrid Varnay. In the mid-1980s she began to sing mezzo roles, marking her 30th anniversary U.S. debut by appearing as the Kostelnicka in Janácek's Jenufa at San Francisco, and added such roles as Clytemnestra and Herodias to her repertoire. She retired as a singer in 1996 and became president of the Vienna Festival.

Joseph Keilberth was a German conductor active during the mid-twentieth century. His talents developed early: he pursued a general education and musical training in Karlsruhe, and at the age of seventeen joined the Karlsruhe State Theater as a répétiteur (vocal coach--a common starting place for European conductors). He remained with the theater and ten years later he was appointed general music director.

He remained there until 1940, when he was appointed chief conductor of the German Philharmonic Orchestra of Prague. He became chief conductor of the Dresden State Opera in 1945. With a minimum of disruption for deNazification (official Allied certification that he was not implicated in Nazi crimes) he remained in that position until 1950.

In 1949 he became chief conductor of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, which was in fact a reunion: After the War, the German population of the Sudetenland (the German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia), which had been the excuse for Hitler's occupation of the country, were returned to Germany, and with them went the German Philharmonic of Prague, Keilberth's old orchestra, which settled in Bamberg. Causing unwary biographers some confusion, he also became the chief conductor of the Hamburg Philharmonic in 1950.

He frequently appeared as a guest conductor elsewhere in Germany, notably with the Berlin Philharmonic and, beginning in 1952, the Bayreuth Festival, and appeared regularly at the Salzburg and Lucerne festivals. In 1952 he also led his first performance in the Edinburgh Festival with the Hamburg State Opera.

He was a favored conductor for the Ring and other operas through 1956. In 1959 he succeeded Ferenc Fricay at the helm of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. There, history repeated itself. Keilberth died after collapsing during a performance of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, just as Felix Mottl--conductor at the same theater--had done in 1911.

Keilberth was very strong in Mozart and in the Wagnerian repertory, and in later German classics such as Pfitzner, Bruckner, Richard Strauss, Max Reger, and Paul Hindemith. His classic recordings included Hindemith's opera Cardillac.