The Norwegian soprano Ingrid Bjoner, who died in 2006, appeared at the Bavarian State Opera's first performance at the rebuilt Nationaltheater in 1963 as the Empress in Die Frau ohne Schatten, enthusiastically received by the first-night audience and later by record collectors. At these performances, as also for her first Isolde, her conductor was Joseph Keilberth, but it was under Keilberth's successor in Munich, Wolfgang Sawallisch, that Ingrid Bjoner's career blossomed during the 1970s, as ORFEO's new portrait attests. By now her voice had matured, allowing her to take on the hochdramatisch repertory illustrated here by her Fidelio Leonore and her Götterdämmerung Brünnhilde. She is also heard in Act Three of Siegfried with the American tenor Jean Cox, who often appeared alongside her. Bjoner was also acclaimed as a Verdi soprano, especially in Munich. In 1974 she shared the role of Leonora with Julia Varady, no less, in a new production of La forza del destino under Eliahu Inbal, an excerpt from which is likewise included. Four years earlier she had sung Amelia in Un ballo in maschera - heard here in the original Italian under Leopold Hager - and had shown that she had no need to fear the demands of her second-act aria, for her voice had retained its enviable flexibility. ORFEO's portrait constitutes an altogether rewarding re-encounter with an outstanding singer inadequately represented in the catalogue.