Opera Singer. A contralto who earned rave reviews throughout Europe, she shall primarily be remembered for her career at the Hamburg State Opera. Of Dutch heritage, the details of her early days are obscured by the tumult of the Nazi era, though she trained locally at the Hamburg Musikhochschule, began appearing in Oratorio presentations while still a student, and made her 1958 Bayreuth operatic bow as both Flosshilde and the Second Norn from Wagner's "Ring Cycle". Indeed, she was a Bayreuth regular up thru 1965 when she sang Fricka in both "Das Rheingold" and "Die Walkure", becoming part of Wieland Wagner's final effort. Made a company member of the Hamburg State Opera in 1960, she built her reputation in both opera and oratorio while making regular guest appearances at La Scala Milano, Covent Garden, the Paris Opera, the Vienna State Opera, the Metropolitan Opera, and the San Francisco Opera. Ursula was acclaimed in all of Wagner's principal contralto roles while also singing the witch Ulrica in Verdi's "Un Ballo en Maschera", the evil title seductress of Saint-Saens' "Samson et Dalila", the whore Maddalena who assists her hired killer brother Sparafucile in Verdi's "Rigoletto", the Mother from Offenbach's "The Tales of Hoffman", Azucena of Verdi's "Il Trovatore", as well as numerous lesser-known roles. Part of at least two world premieres, Gian Carlo Menotti's 1968 "Help! Help! The Globolinks" in which she portrayed Miss Penelope Newkirk and Penderecki's 1969 "Die Teufel von Loudun", in 1969 she was designated Kammersangerin (KS); her oratorio repertoire was massive and included Bach's St. John and St. Matthew Passions and the Mass in B-minor, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Handel's "Messiah", and Mahler's Second, Third, and Eighth Symphonies as well as "Das Lied von Erde". After gradually retiring she lived out her days in her native city and at her demise left a significant recorded legacy.