On Sept. 28, 2021, soprano Karan Armstrong died at the age of 79 in Marbella, Spain.

Born in Havre, Montana on Dec. 14, 1941, Armstrong originally trained as a pianist and graduated with a Bachelor of Music from Concordia College in 1963. She went on to study with Lotte Lehmann in Santa Barbara, California, and made her operatic debut in 1965 with a secondary company in San Francisco, as Musetta in Puccini’s “La bohème.”

In 1966 she would make her first appearance at the San Francisco Spring Opera. Also in 1966, the soprano won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and on Oct. 2 of that same year she made her Met Opera debut “Die Frau ohne Schatten.” She would continue to perform at the Met for years to come while also making debuts at important houses like the Santa Fe Opera and New York City Opera, where she performed until 1977.

She made her European debut in 1974 at the Opéra du Rhin in Strasbourg, France, and followed it by her debut at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, where she would become a household name. In total Armstrong performed 400 times with the company in more than 24 different roles. She spent four decades with the company retiring in 2016 in the role of Larina in “Eugene Onegin.”

In 1978, Armstrong met director Götz Friedrich at a performance of “Salome” in Stuttgart and three years later the couple married, with Armstrong following Friedrich to Berlin and the Deutsche Oper, where he took up the post of Artistic Director in 1981. Up until 2000, when Friedrich died, the two collaborated on multiple productions from the works of Strauss and Wagner to Berg, Korngold, Poulenc, Shostakovich, and Kurt Weill.

Outside of Berlin the soprano performed at many of the major opera houses including the Teatro La Fenice, Royal Opera House, Teatro Regio di Torino, and Bayreuth Festival as well as in Vienna and Paris.

In addition to her stage work, she gave master classes and in 2009 directed a production of “La Traviata” at the Rostock Volkstheater for the first time.

In 1985, Armstrong was named a Kammersängerin in Stuttgart and later received it in 1994 in Berlin.

She is survived by her son, Johannes.

In a statement from the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the company said, “The Deutsche Oper Berlin mourns the loss of a great singer and will cherish Karan Armstrong forever.”