Roberta (Bobbie) Knie, a native of Cordell and an internationally acclaimed dramatic soprano, who sang leading roles on the great stages of Europe and South America as well as at the Metropolitan Opera, died of cancer on March 16, 2017, in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. Bobbie, the second daughter of Robert G. and Nora Standerfer Knie, was born in Cordell on March 13, 1938. She went to Jefferson Grade School, Cordell Junior High and High School, and graduated from CHS in 1956. While Bobbie enjoyed school and excelled in all her classes, she enjoyed playing clarinet in the Junior High Band, too, and riding horseback in the red hills, and singing in the choir at the First Baptist Church. It was not until 1953, her sophomore year, when Pattie Boothe Arnold became Cordell’s Junior High and High School music teacher, that Bobbie began to take a more serious interest in music. She began practicing more often and more attentively and was soon earning Superior ratings in anything related to music, instrumental or vocal, in regional and state competitions. By her junior year she was singing solos in church and was a member of the competitionwinning Girls Trio, Girls Glee Club, and Mixed Chorus. During her senior year, after some private lessons with her favorite teacher, Bobbie auditioned for and was selected to sing with the National Chorus in St. Louis, the highest honor for a high school vocalist. It was Pattie Boothe Arnold who recognized that Bobbie had a truly exceptional voice and great potential if she chose to develop her formidable natural gifts. With her encouragement, Bobbie declared music as her major soon after entering OU in the fall of 1956. There she studied music theory with Dr. Gail deStwolinski and voice with Elizabeth Parham and the great British soprano, Dame Eva Turner. After graduating from OU in 1960, Bobbie sailed for England, where she continued her studies with Dame Eva at London’s Royal Academy of Music, and made the commitment to pursue an extremely demanding professional career. From 1964 to 1974, nurtured by European musicians, coaches, and conductors with direct links to the mainstream musical past, she began building her extensive repertoire and her reputation in the opera houses of Hagen, Freiburg, and Graz. She made her professional debut in Hagen in 1964, as Elizabeth in “Tannhauser” and from 1971-1974 was a frequent guest artist at the Vienna State Opera as Tosca and as a highly acclaimed Salome, a role she subsequently performed in Vienna, Munich, Buenos Aires, Lisbon, Brussels, Pittsburg, Dallas, and New Orleans. Opera News, reporting on her performance as Salome said: “Her singing was of a splendor, a fascination, a freshness and youthfulness which lacks contemporary parallel.” In 1974, Bobbie made her debut in Bayreuth as Brunnhilde in Die Walkure, a performance that was greeted with outstanding reviews, and one that she repeated with equal success in Paris, San Francisco, and Munich. Bobbie performed her first Tristan and Isolde in a Wieland Wagner production in Ravenna in 1975. It was as Isolde that she established her reputation as, quite possibly, the leading Wagnerian soprano of her generation. She performed that role more than sixty times and it was as Isolde with Jon Vickers, the acknowledged leading Tristan of his time, that she made her debuts with the Dallas Opera, The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Chicago Lyric Opera, and the Canadian Opera Company. In 1976, Bobbie made her first appearance at the Metropolitan Opera in New York as Chrysothemis in Strauss’ Elektra, a performance a critic described as “a first class debut … a delight to hear exactly this kind of voice at the Met.” In 1978, following a bravura performance of Tristan and Isolde at the Kennedy Center, the Washington Post critic wrote: “Roberta Knie may today be the foremost soprano for the large Wagner roles. She is the most impressive artist to appear in this repertoire for years.” In 1980, Bobbie returned to the Met as Isolde. In the same year she was named “Oklahoma’s Ambassador of Goodwill” for representing her native state “with distinction.” When a New York opera news interviewer asked Roberta Knie if she didn’t think it odd and highly unlikely that a little girl from a small town in western Oklahoma would be singing the leading soprano role at the Metropolitan Opera, Bobbie replied: “Not at all. We weren’t taught to think small. I’m reasonably certain that Cordell has more opera singers per capita than New York City.” Sadly, it was not long afterward that a series of health problems, including viral pneumonia, began to interfere with the quality of her performances and dim the promise and prospect of a long and illustrious career. While in Austria preparing for a demanding role as Strauss’ Elektra and looking forward to a performance that would reassure her and the opera world that she was once again in excellent health and voice, she was diagnosed with a weakened retina in one eye and a detaching retina in the other and was told that if she continued singing, she was at grave risk of losing her sight entirely. Although contemplating the unanticipated end to her career as a performer was initially devastating, Bobbie chose sight, and, after 1987, devoted her energy, experience, and performance expertise to teaching, coaching, and counseling young singers, a decision that gave her many years of joy in spite of some increasingly serious health problems. From 1992 until 1995, she was Guest Professor at the Hochschule fur Musik in Graz, Austria, and, in recent years, an Artist-in-Residence at the Boyer College of Music and Dance at Temple University in Philadelphia. While she enjoyed other aspects of her second act profession such as judging vocal competitions and conducting master classes, Bobbie’s greatest delight was always in finding and nurturing that special spark that a few aspiring young opera singers have and mentoring them through all the steps required to reach their professional debuts. With characteristic commitment and determination, that’s what she was doing until two weeks prior to her death. In 1982, Roberta Knie of Cordell, Oklahoma, as she was and is listed in opera publications all over the world, was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame, the most prestigious honor the state can confer. She is listed in Who’s Who in Opera (First Edition), Who’s Who in America (Forty-first Edition) and Who’s Who in the World (Sixth Edition). Roberta can be seen on video and DVD in a release by Video Artists International of the Canadian Opera production of extended excerpts from Tristan und Isolde with Jon Vickers and Roberta Knie in the title roles. She can be heard on a relatively recently released CD with Maestro Lovro von Matacic in an all Wagner program singing the “Liebestod” from Tristan und Isolde and “Starke Schelte” from Gotterdammerung. Some of her costumes and other memorabilia from her career are on display in the Washita County Museum, a place she appeared frequently when she was a child and it was the Carnegie Library, the temple of the arts in her beloved hometown. Bobbie is survived by her friend and companion of 24 years, Deborah Karner, of Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania; her sister, Rosemary and brother-in-law, Bob Spalding of Cordell; nephews, Greg Spalding and his wife, Terri, and their sons, Christopher, David and his wife, Courtney, Jonathan, and Daniel Spalding, all of Coppell, Texas; and Wes Spalding and his wife, Kristy, and their daughters, Emily and Audrey Spalding of Cordell. A Memorial Service and Reception will be held in Philadelphia from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m., on April 27, at the Philadelphia Ethical Society, 1906 Rittenhouse Square.