Johanna Meier

Johanna Meier (born February 13, 1938) is an American operatic soprano. She has been described as "one of the foremost Wagnerian sopranos of her era". She had an international career, including fourteen years at the Metropolitan Opera and three summers singing the role of Isolde in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde for the Bayreuth Festival—the Festival's first American Isolde. Meier was raised in Spearfish, South Dakota and continues to contribute to the State, having founded the School of Opera and Vocal Arts as part of the Black Hills State University Summer Institute of the Arts, for which she also serves as Artistic Director. staging the play with her husband each summer in Spearfish, with Meier playing the role of Mary. She also studied under John Brownlee at the Manhattan School of Music before beginning her professional career in 1969 at the New York City Opera, where she sang Mozart roles, slowly adding in roles from Richard Strauss's operas before finally taking on the Wagnerian roles for which she is best known. The City Opera recognized that she was talented both as a singer and as an actress and cast her in several leads. During her fourteen years at the Met, she played fifteen roles, including Chrysothemis, Senta, Leonore, the Empress, the Marschallin, Elisabeth, Ellen Orford, Donna Anna, Tosca, Sieglinde, Brünnhilde and Isolde. , from 1960 until his death in 2013. In January 2014, Meier was awarded the National Opera Association's Lifetime Achievement Award.

In 2008, Miss Meier's book, The Black Hills Passion Play, was published by Arcadia Publishing.

Commercial discography Wagner and Liszt songs 1982 Bellaphon 680-01-019 Weisgall: The Stronger (Weisgall, p. 1972) CRI

Commercial videography Wagner: Tristan und Isolde (Kollo; Barenboim, Ponnelle, 1983) [live] Deutsche Grammophon