Born in Wuppertal, Hesse first studied with Peter Offermanns in Wuppertal, then with Hildegard Scharf in Hamburg and finally also in Milan. She made her debut in 1958 at the Theater Lübeck as Orpheus in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, and remained there until 1960. Afterwards she was engaged for two seasons at the Staatsoper Hannover. In 1960 she made her debut at the Hamburg State Opera and the Bayreuth Festival, where she performed until 1979 and was gradually assigned larger roles, beginning as the Flower Maiden in Parsifal and moving on to Magdalene in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and Ortrud in Lohengrin. , Berlin 1965 From 1962 to 1995, she was engaged by the Deutsche Oper Berlin, singing a wide repertoire. She took part in the world premiere of Henze's Der junge Lord on 7 April 1965, singing the role of Frau von Hufnagel. From the second half of the 1960s she made first appearances at major opera houses in Europe in new roles. In 1965, she sang at the Vienna State Opera both Ortrud and Eboli in Verdi's Don Carlos. A year later, she appeared as Brangäne in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde at the Lyon Opera. In 1968 she was invited by the Holland Festival to sing Herodias in Salome by Richard Strauss. Hesse made her Royal Opera House debut in 1969 as the Nurse in Richard Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten, a lengthy and vocally demanding role depicting a morally ambiguous character. When she reprised the role there in 1975, the critic for The Musical Times described her performance as "tirelessly ingenious and vocally in splendid command". In 1972, she sang at the Paris Opéra Garnier in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, and again as the Nurse. In 1974 and 1975 she was the Nurse in an acclaimed production at the Salzburg Festival, conducted by Karl Böhm and directed by Günther Rennert, alongside James King and Leonie Rysanek as the imperial couple and Walter Berry and Birgit Nilsson as the Dyer and his wife, in a production that was recorded. Hesse also gave guest performances at the Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux, Opéra National de Lyon, Opéra de Marseille, Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse, Chorégies d'Orange and Grand Théâtre de Genève, Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, De Nationale Opera in Amsterdam, Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm and the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. She also performed in several Italian opera houses, including the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, Teatro Regio di Torino and La Fenice in Venice. Invitations to North America took her to the San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago and Washington National Opera and to Mexico City. In South America she performed at the Teatro Colón of Buenos Aires and the Rio de Janeiro Opera. A tour by the Deutsche Oper Berlin also brought her to Japan. She was a regular guest at the Vienna State Opera from 1965 to 1988, where she appeared as Herodias, the Nurse, Ortrud, Brangäne, Magdalene, Fricka and Waltraute, Eboli, as well as Amneris in Verdi's Aida, Azucena in his Il trovatore, Maddalena in his Rigoletto and Preziosilla in his La forza del destino, Giulietta in Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann and Burija in Janáček's Jenůfa. In 1982 she was appointed a Kammersängerin. On 29 November 1988, she retired from the house as Herodias. She also performed in concert, including a performance of Salome at Carnegie Hall in New York in 1975. Hesse has been married to the director since 1976. The couple met in 1975 at the Salzburg Festival, where she was singing in Die Frau ohne Schatten'' and he was serving as an assistant to the production's set designer, Günther Schneider-Siemssen.
Roles
World premieres
1963 Milhaud: Oresteia – Deutsche Oper Berlin
1965 Hufnagel's wife in Henze's Der junge Lord – Deutsche Oper Berlin
Mozart: Requiem, with Heather Harper, Thomas Page, Kieth Engen; Orchestra of the Wiener Staatsoper, Wiener Kammerchor, conductor: Pierre Colombo. Festival Classique
