Reuss-Belce [Baumann], Luise

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(b Vienna, Oct 24, 1860; d Aibach, Augsburg, March 5, 1945). Austrian soprano . She studied in Vienna, making her début in 1881 as Elsa at Karlsruhe, where she sang Cassandra in the first complete performance of Les Troyens (1890). In 1897 she moved to Wiesbaden and in 1901 to Dresden, where she remained until 1911. Having made her Bayreuth début in 1882 as a flowermaiden in the première of Parsifal, she returned (1889–1901) as Eva, Gutrune, Fricka and Second Norn. She made her Covent Garden début in 1893 as Sieglinde and then sang Fricka (1900). Engaged at the Metropolitan (1901–3), she sang Elisabeth, Fricka and Gutrune; she also sang Iolanthe in the American première of Ethel Smyth’s Der Wald (1903). One of the longest-living singers to have participated in a performance under Wagner’s aegis, she had a fine, substantial voice, particularly strong in the middle register....