Maralin Niska, who has died aged 89, was an American soprano with a delicious voice and screen-goddess looks who made headlines by stripping to the waist in a production of Janácek’s The Makropoulos Affair for New York City Opera in 1970.

She was playing the role of Emilia Marty, a woman who had taken a potion giving her immortality but who, after 342 years, was seeking the original formula, the only thing that could bring her existence to a close. During that long life she has enjoyed the attention of a great many lovers, but is now rejecting the advances of Baron Prus, removing her robe to reveal the wounds inflicted by a previous admirer.

Although in the stripping scene she had her back to the audience and only disrobed as far as her waist, the combination of the partial nudity, the sensuousness of her performance and the intensity of Frank Corsaro’s staging caused something of a stir. The New York Times described her as sensational, adding: “It was clear that her mother was a vampire, her father a lycanthrope.”

The singer herself professed to being undisturbed by the attention. “It didn’t bother me to do it,” she said, while preparing to reprise the role a year later. “I wanted to drop the robe farther, but there were objections.”