PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Nina Stemme tilted back her head after the final notes of her 126th and last Isolde performance, and her eyes filled with tears.

She was hugged by tenor Stuart Skelton and mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill as the audience in Marian Anderson Hall stood and applauded Sunday evening.

A few days earlier, Stemme thought back to April 2000, when Glyndebourne Festival general director Nicholas Snowman and opera director Nikolaus Lehnhoff walked into her dressing room in Antwerp, Belgium, asking her to sing in the English company's first-ever performance of Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde."

“I really did think they were joking,” she recalled. “My colleague, Christopher Ventris, said, 'No. No. They’re not joking. You have to be careful.'"

Stemme went home to Sweden, considered the of

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