Soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was a complicated artist, writes Tim Page. “Within the past two years, the music world has lost Renata Tebaldi, Victoria de los Angeles, Birgit Nilsson and Anna Moffo, all sopranos who blazed brightly in the 1950s and 1960s on early LP and stereo recordings; now, with Schwarzkopf’s death, an era seems well and truly at an end.”