Ternina sang initially as a full-time professional performer in
Leipzig and subsequently took up a position with the resident operatic company in
Graz in 1884. She stayed there for two years, acquiring a useful knowledge of stagecraft and manifesting a burning devotion to opera as a serious art form. The conductor
Anton Seidl was impressed by Ternina's potential and he recommended her to replace another acclaimed dramatic soprano,
Katharina Klafsky, at the
Bremen Opera. While in Bremen, she participated in a production of
Richard Wagner's
Ring Cycle (her first). In 1890, she was engaged by the
Munich Royal Opera, where, over the next few years, she consolidated her reputation as a top-class singer and distinguished herself as an outstanding exponent of Wagnerian music dramas. She excelled, too, as
Beethoven's Leonore. Ternina's North American debut took place in
Boston in 1896, when she sang Brünnhilde in
Die Walküre with the
Damrosch Opera Company. In 1898, she appeared for the first time in opera in
London, performing Isolde in
Tristan und Isolde. She would continue to appear at the
Royal Opera House,
Covent Garden, until 1906, achieving a total of 98 appearances there in a variety of operas. Ternina appeared at the 1899
Bayreuth Festival in the role of Kundry in
Parsifal. According to Oxford's concise operatic dictionary, this would prove to be her sole appearance at Bayreuth. On January 27, 1900, Ternina made her debut at the
Metropolitan Opera in
New York City as Elisabeth in
Tannhäuser. During her fruitful association with the Met she sang Kundry in ''Parsifal's'' first American performance. Because this staging of the opera was not authorized by the Wagner family, she was never again invited to appear at Bayreuth, despite her stature as an artist. Ternina famously sang the title role in the 1901 American premiere of
Giacomo Puccini's
Tosca, performing the part at the Met to considerable acclaim on 18 further occasions. The previous year she had been London's first Floria Tosca, too, with the composer, who had been in the audience at Covent Garden that night, describing her interpretation as "ideal". She thus became the English-speaking world's most renowned interpreter of this particular Puccini heroine. ==Retirement and later life==