Gisela M. Riess

Mystic - It was music, then a war that shaped the life of Gisela M. Riess, a graceful, trained opera singer who lost her voice as a young woman in Germany during World War II.

Gisela was born June 9, 1924, in Konigsberg, Germany, now Kaliningrad, Russia. She died on Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2011 at Mystic Healthcare.

Gisela graduated with distinction from the renowned Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, where she concentrated on piano, organ, and voice and met her first husband. They had a child, Marianne, but as the war stepped up their promising music careers vaporized, as did the marriage.

After the war, Gisela graduated again with distinction in 1949 from the Hochschule fur Musik in Berlin, concentrating on voice. Friends and colleagues remarked that she had a rich contralto voice, and that with her brilliance in music, she also would have been a great conductor, a profession rarely open to women.

Under the stress of war and faulty voice lessons, she lost her voice as a young woman and could speak only at a whisper for the rest of her life. Her parents felt there was no future for Gisela and her young daughter in Europe, and in 1950, her mother arranged for their travel to the United States. Gisela worked as a nanny then bookkeeper in Norwich. She also played organ for the Taftville Congregational Church.

In 1954 she married Herbert Riess, her partner for 50 years. They melded their two families and settled into a labyrinthine house with enough room for five children and a series of collies and German shepherds, who sneaked upstairs and lounged on beds. Books were ever-present, but little talk of the war.

She became an astute business woman and helped her realtor husband grow the Herbert H. Riess Agency of Norwich. She won numerous golf trophies, deciphered cryptograms with computer efficiency, and made the best Swedish pancakes this side of the Atlantic. Secretly, she and Herb also had a habit of charitable giving and helping and not much was said about that either.

Gisela channeled her sharp intellect into contract bridge. The American Contract Bridge League certified her as an Advanced Senior Master in 1987. She was a several times heat winner of the Epson World Bridge Championship in the late 1980s.

Gisela is survived by her daughter, Marianne Stone of Seattle, Wash.; a step-son, Warren Riess of Bristol, Maine; three step-daughters. Virigina Partain of Orlando, Florence Burt of Norwich, and Patricia Tennison of Chicago; ten grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

Donations to the Alzheimer's Association or to Mystic Healthcare, whose staff so kindly cared for her, would bring comfort to her indomitable spirit.

Funeral services will be private.

The Dinoto Funeral Home, 17 Pearl St., historic downtown Mystic, is in charge of arrangements.

To share a message of condolence with her family, please visit www.dinotofuneral.com