Opera Singer. A lyric soprano who later sang the heavier dramatic roles, she shall be remembered for her long tenure at the Vienna State Opera (VSO). Born Srebrenka Jurinac at Travnik in what was then Yugoslavia, she showed musical talent from an early age and following study at Zagreb's Conservatory made her 1942 operatic bow in that city as Mimi from Puccini's "La Boheme". Engaged by Karl Bohm for Vienna she was to see her debut delayed and her life nearly ended by a 1944 bombing raid before finally giving her first performance in the Austrian capital on May 1, 1945, as Cherubino in Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro". Sena was initially heard at Covent Garden, London, as Dorabella from Mozart's "Cosi fan tutte" during a 1947 VSO tour and and the next year was invited back to England for the first of her many Glyndebourne Festival appearances. Over the years her repertoire expanded to include numerous Mozartean roles among them both Donna Anna and Donna Elvira of "Don Giovanni", Fiordiligi from "Cosi fan tutte", Ilya in "Idomeneo", and La Contessa in "The Marriage of Figaro", the Elisabeths of both Verdi's "Don Carlos" and Wagner's "Tannhauser", the young Octavian and later 'his' older love The Marschallin from Richard Strauss' "Der Rosenkavalier", the title leads of Puccini's "Tosca" and "Madame Butterfly", Georges Bizet's "Carmen", and Leos Janacek's "Jenufa", Leonora in Verdi's "La Forza del Destino", Marie of Alban Berg's "Wozzeck", the tragic Desdemona in Verdi's "Otello" and both Marzelline and Leonore from Beethoven's "Fidelio". Sena bade farewell to Glyndebourne in 1956 as Donna Anna and made her American debut at San Francisco in 1959 as Butterfly; heard but few times in the United States, she declined all offers from the Metropolitan. She was to continue her predominantly European career and was heard for the last of 1,268 times at the VSO in 1983 as The Marschallin. That same year she was invested with the honourary title of Kammersangerin and was to continue giving recitals for a time, after which she was a respected teacher. Sena lived out her days in Bavaria and died of the effects of advanced age. She was often to joke that she should have married a record producer though she did leave a significant legacy of discs both "live" and studio.