Opera Singer. A dramatic soprano, she was possibly the premier Wagnerian of the late 20th century. Raised in northern Germany by a well-off family, she studied piano and violin as a child, graduated from the University of Freiberg Law School where she learned skills that made her a tough contract negotiator in future years, and while in school discovered her vocal prowess by singing in the choir. Following several years of training at the Freiberg Music Academy, she made her 1971 professional debut as La Contessa in Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro" at Freiberg. Attaching herself to the Deutsch Oper Dusseldorf, she spent the next seasons refining her skills in increasingly substantial roles; the first of her 171 appearances (made thru 1999) at New York's Metropolitan Opera came on October 15, 1976 as the unfaithful Giorgetta of Puccini's "Il Tabarro". After making her Salzburg debut in 1977 as the lead of Richard Strauss' "Salome", she finally gained recognition as a top-tier singer with her performances as Leonore in a 1980 production of Beethoven's "Fidelio" under the baton of Karl Boehm. Though continuing to sing such roles as Salome, Donna Anna in Mozart's "Don Giovanni" and the title leads of Puccini's "Tosca" and Strauss' "Elektra", Hildegard was to be known primarily as a Wagnerian for the remainder of her career. Between 1983 and 1986 she headlined at Wagner's Bayreuth Festspielhaus as Brunnnhilde in "The Ring" then thru the 1980s and 1990s appeared throughout the world in Otto Schenk's Ring production while garnering praise as Senta in "The Flying Dutchman" and as the title heroine of "Tristan und Isolde", gaining acclaim for her part in Leonard Bernstein's 1985 recording of the latter. Her honors were many including multiple designations as Kammersangerin (KS) as well as the Order of Merit Cross, Germany's highest civilian award, and the Lotte Lehmann Ring from The Vienna State Opera. Hildegard lived her final years in Vienna died suddenly of an aortic aneurysm while visiting Japan. A large number of CDs and DVDs document her art including a much praised 'live' 1985 Giuseppe Sinopoli-led "Tosca" co-starring Placido Domingo and a 1990 Grammy-winning complete "Die Walkure" conducted by James Levine. Of the similarities between law and opera she said: "You go step by step in law, and that's what you do in opera too — finding motivations, reasons, cause and effect, emotions, guilt, responsibility. The intellectual training and discipline that it takes to solve a juridical case are very good for the approaches to a role."