Régine Crespin

Régine Crespin was born in Marseille in February 1927 and studied at the Conservatoire de Paris with Suzanne Cesbron-Viseur and Georges Jouatte. She made her début at the Mulhouse Opera in 1950 as Elsa in *Lohengrin*, and through the 1950s established herself in the French operatic houses in a lyric-dramatic soprano repertoire — Tosca, Elsa, Marguerite, Tatiana.

Her international career took off after her Bayreuth début in 1958 as Kundry in *Parsifal* — a performance that established her as one of the leading Wagner sopranos of the period. She was also the central French Strauss soprano of her generation, particularly in the Marschallin in *Der Rosenkavalier*, the Countess in *Capriccio*, and Ariadne. Beyond Wagner and Strauss her central French repertoire — Berlioz’s Dido and Cassandra in *Les Troyens*, the title role in Massenet’s *Hérodiade*, Berlioz’s *Les nuits d’été* (which she recorded definitively with Ansermet for Decca), and Poulenc’s Madame Lidoine in *Dialogues des Carmélites* — defined the international reputation of post-war French operatic singing. In her later career she moved into mezzo-soprano roles, including Carmen and the Countess in *The Queen of Spades*.

Crespin retired from staged opera in 1989 and taught at the Conservatoire de Paris through the 1990s. She died in Paris in July 2007. Music Preserved’s archive includes a substantial range of her Wagner, Strauss and French operatic work.