Söderström (-Olow), (Anna) Elisabeth

Söderström (-Olow), (Anna) Elisabeth, prominent Swedish soprano; b. Stockholm, May 7, 1927. She studied voice with Andreyeva von Skilondz in Stockholm, and also took courses in languages and literary history at the Univ. of Stockholm, and received a thorough musical education at the Stockholm Royal Opera School. She made her operatic debut as Bastienne in Mozart’s Bastien und Bastienne at the Drottningholm Court Theater in Stockholm in 1947. She became a member of the Royal Opera there in 1950. She made her first appearance in Salzburg as Ighino in Pfitzner’s Palestrina in 1955; then at the Glyndebourne Festival as the Composer in Ariadne auf Naxos in 1957, becoming one of its most noted singers. She made her Metropolitan Opera debut in N.Y. as Susanna in Le nozze de Figaro on Oct. 30, 1959, and remained on its roster until 1964. Subsequently she pursued her career mainly in Europe until returning to the U.S. in 1977 to sing the title role in Kat’a Kabanová at the San Francisco Opera. She returned to the Metropolitan Opera in 1983 as Ellen Orford in Peter Grimes. In 1988 she sang in the premiere of Argento’s The Aspern Papers in Dallas. In 1990 she was appointed artistic director of the Drottningholm Court Theater. In 1991 she was awarded the Stora Culture Prize. In 1999 she came out of retirement to portray the Countess in The Queen of Spades at the Metropolitan Opera. Her extraordinary command of languages made her an outstanding concert and lieder artist, both in Europe and in North America. Among her notable roles were Fiordiligi, Tatyana, Sophie, Marie in Wozzeck, the Countess in Capriccio, Jenůfa, Emilia Marty in The Makropoulos Affair, and the Governess in The Turn of the Screw. She publ. a lighthearted autobiography, I Min Tonart (1978; Eng. tr., 1979, as In My Own Key).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire