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German soprano Hildegard Behrens, known for her dramatic portrayals of Richard Wagner's heroines, has died during a visit to Japan, organisers of a music festival there said Wednesday. She was 72.
Behrens worked with great conductors including Leonard Bernstein and Herbert von Karajan, won multiple awards and performed at the New York Metropolitan Opera, also recording numerous albums in her decades-long career.
She died on Tuesday in a Tokyo hospital from an aortic aneurysm, said a representative of the annual Kusatsu International Summer Music Academy and Festival, where she had been due to teach and perform this week.
Shortly after arriving in Japan Sunday, Behrens "said she was feeling unwell from low blood pressure," festival secretariat spokeswoman Miyuki Takebayashi told AFP. "She was taken by ambulance and immediately hospitalised."
The singer's son and manager Philip Behrens and her daughter flew in and joined her in hospital where she died in surgery, Takebayashi said.
Behrens was born in Varel near Oldenburg, Germany, and learned the piano and violin at a young age, according to an obituary released by the secretariat.
She began formal music studies while she was a law student in Freiburg.
Her talent was noticed by maestro Herbert von Karajan, and she rose to fame when he invited her to the 1977 Salzburg Festival.
She was most renowned for her portrayals of the heroines of Wagner and Richard Strauss, but her wide repertoire also included demanding soprano roles in the works of Mozart and other composers.
She received state honours from Germany and Austria and numerous awards, including, according to her website, the 1997 Singer of the Year prize by the German opera magazine Die Opernwelt.
A frequent visitor to Japan, she had in recent years been a fixture at the festival in the hot-spring resort of Kusatsu, 150 kilometres (90 miles) northwest of Tokyo, where she had been due to perform Thursday.
Her body will be cremated in Tokyo on Thursday and her remains may be sent to Kusatsu for a memorial event, the spokeswoman said.
"Her son and daughter will attend the memorial service, which will be a kind of farewell for Madame Behrens," Takebayashi said.
