In the spring of 1999, British music critics voted Christa Ludwig number 10 on their list of the 100 most important vocal artists of the 20th century. Born in Berlin in 1928, Christa sang without a mistake the Queen of the Night's aria from The Magic Flute. But as a child under the Third Reich, particularly during the final war years, for Christa music was largely silenced, replaced by deprivation, bombings, and fear. The war over, Christa's mezzo-soprano brought her almost immediate recognition, and in 1946 she made her professional debut with the Frankfurt Opera singing Orlvosky in Fledermaus. So began a career that soared for close to 50 years, encompassing dozens of roles, as memorable as they were dissimilar, from the Marschallin and Carmen to Kundry and Amneris, and ending with her farewell appearance, in Vienna in 1994, as Klytamnestra in Elektra.