Edith Mathis, Radiant Swiss Soprano, Is Dead at 86

Edith Mathis, a light-voiced Swiss soprano who sparkled in Bach, Mozart and Weber and was the agile-voiced favorite of several of the conducting giants who dominated mid-20th-century concert halls, died on Sunday at her home in Salzburg, Austria. She was 86.

Her death was announced by the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, where she sang throughout the 1970s and ’80s.

But she was also a star in all the world’s other major opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera, illuminating roles like Cherubino and Susanna in Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro,” Ännchen in Weber’s “Der Freischütz” and Marzelline in Beethoven’s “Fidelio,” which she sang five times at the Met in 1971 under Karl Böhm. She was a favorite of his, as she was of his rival for conducting pre-eminence in the last century, Herbert von Karajan.

The dozens of opera, oratorio, cantata and song recordings Ms. Mathis left behind illustrate why: a clear, bright voice, perfect intonation even on the highest notes, an unaffected manner and absolute service to the text — “the voice so reliably radiant and clear, the musicianship so reliably impeccable,” the British critic Hugo Shirley wrote in Gramophone magazine in 2018, reviewing a CD collection released by Deutsche Grammophon in observance of her 80th birthday. She was, the dramaturg Malte Krasting wrote in a tribute for the Bavarian State Opera, “the epitome of an ideal Mozart singer.”

She was also ideal in the German lieder repertoire — Schubert, Schumann and Hugo Wolf — many of whose songs she recorded with all-star partners like Christoph Eschenbach and Graham Johnson.

When, for instance, she sang the Schubert song “Schlaflied” in a 1994 recording with Mr. Johnson, she gave a slight, barely perceptible push to the German word “jedem” (“all” or “every”), in the line “And is healed of all pain.” The extra measure of reassurance for the poem’s subject, a young boy, adds a dramatic point to the whole song.