Sena Jurinac

Sena Jurinac was born in Travnik, Bosnia, in October 1921 and studied at the Zagreb Music Academy with Marija Kostrenčić. She made her début at the Zagreb Opera in 1942 as Mimì in *La bohème* and joined the Vienna State Opera ensemble in 1945 — the position she held for the next thirty-eight years until her retirement in 1983.

She was the central Mozart and Strauss lyric soprano of the post-war Vienna State Opera. Her core Mozart roles — Donna Elvira, Pamina, Fiordiligi, the Countess, Susanna — and her Strauss roles — Octavian in *Der Rosenkavalier* (the role of her first international fame, particularly in the legendary 1954 EMI recording under Erich Kleiber), the Composer in *Ariadne auf Naxos*, the Marschallin (which she took up in her later career), and Strauss’s *Vier letzte Lieder* — defined her recorded legacy. She sang at the Salzburg Festival under Furtwängler, Böhm and Karajan, at Covent Garden, the Glyndebourne Festival (where she was a regular guest from 1949), the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the Chicago Lyric Opera. She also sang the Verdi and Italian lyric repertoire — Desdemona, Tosca, the Countess in *Don Carlo*, Cio-Cio-San — and Tatiana in *Eugene Onegin*.

Jurinac died in Augsburg in November 2011 at ninety. Music Preserved’s archive includes a substantial range of her Mozart, Strauss and Italian lyric work.