Eleanor Steber was a major figure in the wonderful company of Mozart singers at the Met
in the 1940s and 50s. Her Countess, Fiordiligi and Donna Anna are legendary
and she was a superb Donna Elvira and Pamina. Besides Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier - her début role -
she gave us wonderful performances of the Marschallin. She also excelled in roles of
Wagner, Barber and Berg. After 1961 she returned to the concert stage for many
years with a stop at the Met in 1966 to perform in "Fanciulla Del West."

She sang many lieder recitals, an aspect of her art less familiar to New Yorkers but there were memorable ones like the
Hunter College Recital of 1968 and theLiederabend at Alice Tully Hall. Here is Richard Strauss'
"Befreit" sung in April of 1973 with Lambert Orkis, piano.
Among her favorites for these recitals were Schumann's "Frauenliebe und Leben"
Hugo Wolf's "Gesitliche Lieder" and the "Italianisches Liederbuch" as well as Claude Debussy's "Five Songs on Poems of Baudelaire"
Also frequently performed were Britten's "Winter Words", Alban Berg's "Seven Early Songs"
The Brahms "Magelone Lieder", Beethoven's "An die ferne Geliebte" and of course the lieder of her beloved Richard Strauss.

Eleanor as Elsa at Bayreuth in 1953. The cast included Wolfgang Windgassen as Lohengrin
with Astrid Varnay and Hermann Uhde, Keilberth conducting.
London Records released the complete opera on LP and Teldec has reissued the set on CD.
Elsa is a role that she sang at the Metropolitan during two seasons and she took part
in two broadcasts of Lohengrin. Here is a portion of the beautiful and sinister duet
between Elsa (Eleanor Steber) and Ortrud (Margaret Harshaw) from Act 2 of the 1955 Met Broadcast.