Portal:Opera/Selected biography/36

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Facade of the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, NYC

Maria Friderike Radner (7 May 1981 – 24 March 2015) was a German contralto who performed internationally in opera and in concerts. Radner studied at the Robert Schumann Hochschule in Düsseldorf, Germany. Both Stern magazine and Munich's Abendzeitung described her as an "extremely talented interpreter of Wagner's music". Possessing the "rare pitch of a true alto", she frequently appeared as Erda in Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Leipzig Opera, Schwertleite in Die Walküre at the Teatro Comunale di Firenze with Zubin Mehta, and in Mahler's Symphony No. 2 (the Resurrection) conducted by Antonio Pappano in Rome and Milan. Her debut at the Metropolitan Opera (pictured) in 2012 in Götterdämmerung was part of that company's documentary Wagner's Dream. Radner died on 24 March 2015 along with her husband Sascha Schenk, their two-year-old son Felix, and her colleague Oleg Bryjak, when Germanwings Flight 9525 crashed near Prads-Haute-Bléone in France. The First Officer had a history of depression, barricaded himself into the cockpit, and deliberately crashed the plane into the mountains.