The Welsh soprano Dame Margaret Price, who has died at the age of 69 of heart failure, was one of the most beloved singers of her generation. Though initially a mezzo-soprano, she developed a successful career as a lyric soprano, specialising in Mozart and the lighter Verdi roles. One of the landmarks of her career was her Isolde in Carlos Kleiber's recording of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, a role she never performed on stage. But her "first and last love", she said in a recent interview with Edward Seckerson, was lieder, a genre to which she remained devoted even after her retirement from the stage
Though born to a musical family in Blackwood, between Tredegar and Cardiff, she was not encouraged to take up music professionally: indeed her father told her that: "No daughter of mine is going into the theatre." At first she was unperturbed, as she was intent while at what was then Pontllanfraith grammar school on becoming a biology teacher: "I absolutely adored cutting up frogs."
At that time too she felt that if she were to take up a musical career it would be to sing lieder. And indeed, having won a scholarship to study singing (as a mezzo-soprano) with Charles Kennedy Scott at the Trinity College of Music in London, that was the area she specialised in initially. On leaving college she was briefly a member of the Ambrosian Singers, the versatile choral group whose recording work ranged from film scores to opera. There she struggled somewhat, given her self-confessed inadequacy at sight-singing.
Her father had been won over by this time and began to write letters on her behalf to various opera companies including Welsh National Opera and Covent Garden. At the former she took the part of Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro in 1962 – her stage debut – and followed up her success by auditioning at the latter. Georg Solti, then music director of the Royal Opera, made it clear that he did not want her there, his verdict being that she "lacks charm", and she prepared to return to lieder. A second audition, undertaken with some reluctance, elicited no greater enthusiasm from Solti, but she was nevertheless given a contract to cover Teresa Berganza, again as Cherubino. The contract stated that she was never to sing in the house but for Berganza's indisposition. However, when that moment came, she stepped in to great acclaim.
Her accompanist for the second audition at Covent Garden had been James Lockhart, who then coached and accompanied her for many years, building a fruitful partnership and guiding her towards the soprano repertoire. She appeared at Glyndebourne, first as the Angel in Handel's Jephtha, then as Konstanze in Die Entführung aus dem Serail, confirming her empathy for Mozartian roles. Her American debut came in San Francisco as Pamina in The Magic Flute in 1969, followed by a Fiordiligi in Così Fan Tutte in Chicago in 1972. Developing her Mozartian credentials in Germany, primarily in Cologne and Munich in the early 1970s, she took on other roles also, in opera houses across the world, notably in Verdi – Amelia in Simon Boccanegra, Desdemona in Otello and Elisabetta in Don Carlos – and as Ariadne in Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos.
The years in Germany, where she settled for a number of years, were happy, and she found working with the stage director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle rewarding. Though many cherished her Desdemona – the role in which she made her debut at the Metropolitan, New York, in 1985 – it was not her favourite role. In general she was content to sing Mozart, four or five of the lighter Verdi roles, and of course lieder. It was something of a surprise, therefore, when she was cast by Kleiber as Isolde for his 1982 recording of Wagner's opera. It was a felicitous choice, however, as Price was able to bring the virtues of a light, lyric soprano to a role traditionally taken by a vocal heavyweight. The pure quality of her tone makes her seem an ideally young Irish princess, while Kleiber's conducting allowed her to explore nuances that would have been all but impossible onstage. The Liebestod is deeply moving in its vulnerability and, thanks also to Kleiber, suggests a true transfiguration.
Another memorable recording of repertoire with which she was not normally associated was that of Elgar's oratorio The Kingdom, where her peerless legato and rapturous tone were deployed to especially glorious effect in The Sun Goeth Down. No less treasured were her appearances and recordings as a lieder singer, with performances of Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Strauss among her greatest achievements.
In conversation she was modest and down to earth, qualities that endeared her to her public. She was appointed DBE in 1993, and after her retirement in 1999 she returned to her roots, living on the Pembrokeshire coast with her three dogs.