Reuss-Belce, Luise

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Reuss-Belce, Luise

Reuss-Belce, Luise , Austrian soprano; b. Vienna, Oct. 24, 1860; d. (found dead in a refugee train) Aibach, Germany, March 5, 1945. She studied voice in Vienna. She made her operatic debut as Elsa in Lohengrin in Karlsruhe (1881), and then sang in Bayreuth (1882) and in Wiesbaden (1896–99). Subsequent appearances were at Covent Garden in London (1900) and at the Metropolitan Opera in N.Y., where she made her debut as Brünnhilde in Die Walküre (Feb. 11, 1902); then sang in Dresden (1903–11). In 1885 she married Eduard Reuss (b. N.Y., Sept. 16, 1851; d. Dresden, Feb. 18, 1911), a music pedagogue; after his death, she moved to Berlin, where she established a singing school. In 1913 she was appointed stage manager at the festival opera performances in Nuremberg; she was the first woman to occupy such a post in Germany.

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire