Ewa Podles, rare contralto with sweeping range; at 71

Ewa Podles, the Polish contralto whose darkly molten, three-octave-plus voice and commanding presence made her a favorite of opera connoisseurs, died on Friday in Warsaw, Poland. She was 71.

Her death, in a hospice center, was confirmed by her stepdaughter, Ania Marchwinska, who said the cause was lung cancer.

Aficionados embraced Ms. Podles (whose full name was pronounced AE-vuh PODE-lesh) not just for her exciting performances, but also for how unusual she was: True contraltos — the lowest-lying female voice type, deeper than a mezzo-soprano — are hardly common.

Developing the low chest register as much as the rest of the voice, a contralto is “like an alto in the lower range, like a soprano on top,” Ms. Podles told The New York Times in 1998. And she fit that bill: Though her tone was melancholically hooded and brooding, with a cavernous chest register, she also had the high notes and agility to excel at Handel and Rossini’s most demandingly florid roles.

“It’s a very rare voice,” Ms. Podles said of her instrument.

And she wielded it with utter authority. “Never, for even one moment of one recitative in any opera, was she anything but riveting in her conviction,” conductor Will Crutchfield, who collaborated with her several times, said in a phone interview. “She had something to say.”

Ewa Maria Podles was born on April 26, 1952, in Warsaw to Walery and Teresa (Sawicka) Podles, a member of the chorus of the Polish National Opera.

“My mother was an extraordinary singer,” Ms. Podles told the Times. “She had a very, very deep voice, like a man. She recorded a bit on the radio, but everyone who heard her asked: ‘Is it really a woman singing?’”

Ms. Podles didn’t have to fight for her low notes, either. “It’s the most natural register in my voice,” she said. “I was born with this chest voice. Some people hate the chest voice, and some people say: ‘Oh, it’s magnificent. I adore you.’”

She studied in Warsaw at the conservatory that is now the Chopin University of Music, and she was a prizewinner at the 1978 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. She made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1984, taking over for the great mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne in the title role of Handel’s “Rinaldo.” (That part, like many of Ms. Podles’ Baroque specialties, was originally written for a male castrato and is typically sung today by a lowerregister female singer or a male countertenor.)

Ms. Podles’ husband, Jerzy Marchwinski, a prominent pianist who was a close adviser to his wife, died in November. In addition to her stepdaughter, Ania Marchwinska, she leaves her and her husband’s daughter, Maria Madej, and four grandchildren.