Helga Dernesch

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Helga Dernesch (b. February 3, 1939 in Vienna) is an Austrian soprano and mezzo soprano. Her career has taken her through four successive phases: from mezzo-soprano to lyric soprano to dramatic soprano and after about 1980 back to mezzo again "Her voice had great richness and power, and her strikingly handsome stage appearance and intense acting made her a compelling performer. Dernesch studied at the Vienna Hochschule für Musik before making her debut in 1961 singing Marina in Boris Godunov in Bern. She continued to sing in Bern from 1961 to 1963, in Wiesbaden 1963-1965 and in Cologne from 1965-1968.[1] She made her first appearance in Bayreuth (as Wellgunde in Der Ring des Nibelungen) in 1965. Two years later she was singing Elisabeth in Tannhäuser there, and Sieglinde with the Bayreuth Festival on tour in Osaka. She made her first appearance at the Salzburg Easter Festival in 1969. With Scottish Opera she performed Gutrune (1968), her first Leonore (1970), the Marschallin (1971), Brünnhilde, Isolde, Ariadne, and Cassandra. She has also appeared in most of the world's other great opera houses, including Zürich, Amsterdam, Glyndebourne, London, Paris, San Francisco, New York and Chicago in such roles as Leonore, Sieglinde and Brünnhilde in Die Walküre, Isolde, The Dyer's Wife in Die Frau ohne Schatten, Clytemnestra in Elektra, Kabanicha in Káťa Kabanová, The Countess in Pique Dame, and Larina in Eugen Onegin. She continued to sing regularly at the Bavarian State Opera where

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