Lisa Della Casa - Health Crises

Health Crises

In the mid-1960s, her taste for the operatic stage began to decline and she gave fewer performances. As film excerpts show, her singing was still functioning at its best. However, in 1970, her daughter Vesna, then 20 years old, suffered an aneurysm. She kept to her engagements, notably in Handel's Agrippina in Zürich. Vesna had to be operated on immediately. She survived the operation, but there were complications. She begged her mother to continue singing, as it made her feel healthier, but Della Casa devoted more and more time to her daughter’s recovery, even buying a house in Spain where the family could gather undisturbed most of the year, and gave fewer and fewer performances until her final performance at the Wiener Staatsoper, as Arabella on 25 October 1973. And in 1974, she surprised the opera world by announcing her sudden retirement, aged 55. She was then considered to be at the height of her career and left her fans bewildered: "no explanations, no comeback, no masterclasses, no interviews, no private appearances". Vesna spoke movingly of her mother's "unceasing, limitless love" ("eine Liebe ohne Ende"). Many years later she herself suffered a kind of stroke, but recovered after four years.