She made her debut with the company on February 22, 1965 as Ortlinde in Richard Wagner's Die Walküre with Birgit Nilsson as Brünnhilde, Jon Vickers as Siegmund, Leonie Rysanek as Sieglinde, George London as Wotan, and Irene Dalis as
Broom-Hilda (a pun on Brünnhilde) is a witch with green skin, a wart on the end of her nose and long stringy hair.
According to Albert Speer, the Berlin Philharmonic's last performance before their evacuation from Berlin at the end of World War II was of Brünnhilde's Immolation Scene at the end of the opera.
•
Bearing Brünnhilde's shield and mounting her horse Grane, Siegfried rides away as an orchestral interlude (Siegfried's Journey to the Rhine) starts.
Other performance credits include appearances at the Liceu (Isolde), Teatro Regio di Torino (Brünnhilde in Götterdämmerung), the San Francisco Opera (Brünnhilde in Die Walküre), Vienna State Opera (Isolde, Kostelnička), Deutsche Oper am Rhein, the Palacio de Bellas Artes, the Grand Théâtre de Genève, and the Canadian Opera Company.
From Bayreuth, Hofmann appeared as Siegmund in the 1980 Die Walküre (with Dame Gwyneth Jones as Brünnhilde) conducted by Pierre Boulez, in Patrice Chéreau's 1976 Ring production (Deutsche Grammophon), and in the title role of the 1982 Lohengrin (opposite Karan Armstrong as Elsa) conducted by Woldemar Nelsson (EuroArts), in Götz Friedrich's production.
Rita Hunter will be remembered as one of the major Wagnerian sopranos of the later 20th century, especially for her performances as all three of the Brünnhildes in the Ring cycle, conducted by Reginald Goodall at the English National Opera.