Margarete Sjöstedt

Margareta Sjöstedt, also Sjöstedt-Kraus, (1923–2012) was a Swedish-Austrian contralto who received voice training in Stockholm, Salzburg and Vienna. She gave her first lieder recital in 1951 in Stockholm. From 1955 until her retirement in 1982, she was engaged by the Vienna State Opera where she took part in over a thousand performances, appearing in parallel in lieder recitals and at the Salzburg Festivals. She was a guest singer in the opera houses of Madrid, Lisbon, Dublin and Berlin and gave recitals in Paris and London.

Biography Born in Stockholm on 17 November 1923, Margareta Sjöstedt was trained at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm (1947–1951), at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and at the Academy of Music and the Performing Arts in Vienna. Her teachers included , , Elisabeth Radó and Erik Werba. While studying, she sang in and in the Swedish jazz group Melody Girls.

In 1963, she married the deputy director of Vienna's Burgtheater Heinrich Kraus (1923–2018), after which she appeared as Margareta Sjöstedt-Kraus. She died in Vienna on 14 March 2012, aged 88.