Obituaries.(Obituary)

MARTHA MODL, Nuremberg, March 22, 1912 -- Stuttgart, December 16, 2001

Martha Modl wasn't just an emblematic Wagnerian soprano in postwar Germany. She also happened to be a singing actress of unique force and rare independence, an artist whose extraordinary career ignored traditional limits in matters of range, interpretation, specialty and longevity.

Modl began conventionally as a lyric mezzo-soprano, but she soon graduated, bravely and dangerously, to the stressful realm of Isolde and Brunnhilde. She did it, of course, her way. Eventually she returned to the lower vocal depths via the great character roles of Strauss, Janacek and Wagner. Finally, she brought her special illumination -- a hypnotic quality probably more intuitive than intellectual -- to supporting roles. Along the way, she wasn't too proud to try Golde, the longsuffering wife, in German productions of Fiddler on the Roof, or Ruth, the Savoyard maid of all work, in a Teutonic variation of The Pirates of Penzance.

An illustrious example of what her compatriots admiringly called a "theater animal," Modl was virtually possessed by the stage. That never changed. Just a few months before her death at eighty-nine, she appeared in the cameo role of the Nurse in Boris Godunov at the Komische Oper in Berlin and won ovations to rival those for the Tsar.

After studying at the Nuremberg Conservatory, Modl made her debut as Hansel at Remscheid in 1942. Notable engagements followed in Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Berlin and Stuttgart. Her breakthrough occurred when Wieland Wagner chose her for Kundry at the first postwar Bayreuth Festival, in 1951. Sharing the heroic challenges with her friend Astrid Varnay, she returned to Bayreuth for sixteen summers, ultimately exchanging Brunnhilde's immolation for Waltraute's warning.

She was one of Wieland Wagner's muses, a soprano who could project emotional intensity without resorting to the abhorred conventional gestures. She savored the impact of economy. She conveyed drama in the way she colored the text, the way she stood and moved, the way she altered moods with her eyes alone.

Modl graced all the world's great opera houses, and not just in Wagner. Early on, she actually ventured Carmen in English at Covent Garden. Vienna enlisted her as Leonore in the Fidelio that reopened the Staatsoper. Munich chose her as the Nurse when Die Frau ohne Schatten became one of the inaugural presentations at the rebuilt Nationaltheater. She created roles in works of Reimann, Fortner, Klebe, Cerha, Einem and Eotvos. A diva totally lacking diva-ego, she embraced the vulgar indulgences of Begbick in Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. She made opera her universe. It never left her much time or energy for a so-called private life.