Maria Radner
Born: 1st January 1981, Dusseldorf, Germany
Died: 24th March 2015, Prads Haute Bleone, France
Nationality: German
Maria Radner was born in Düsseldorf in 1981 and studied at the Robert Schumann Hochschule, with early successes including a Bayreuth Bursary in 2007. Wagner was to loom large in her short but illustrious career: in 2012 she made her Covent Garden debut as Erda and Erste Norn in Keith Warner’s Ring Cycle, and her Metropolitan Opera debut in the latter role that same year, as well as recording Erda for Marek Janowski’s Das Rheingold on Pentatone in 2013. Radner was also in demand for works including Mahler’s Third and Eighth Symphonies, Dvorak’s Requiem and Stabat Mater and Beethoven’s Missa solemnis, as well as operatic roles such as Dritte Dame in Die Zauberflöte, Stimme von oben in Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten and Anna in Berlioz’s Les Troyens, which she performed under Antonio Pappano in Rome.