She is particularly known for her Wagnerian roles as Kundry, Isolde, Ortrud, Venus, Fricka, and Sieglinde, but has also had success in the French and Italian repertoire appearing as Eboli, Amneris, Carmen, and Santuzza.
She has performed under the batons of conductors including Riccardo Muti, Daniel Barenboim, Claudio Abbado, James Levine, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, and Giuseppe Sinopoli.
Following a success as Kundry in Wagner's Parsifal at the 1983 Bayreuth Festival, Meier's international career gained momentum, and she had debuts at Covent Garden (1985) and the Metropolitan Opera (1987)[4] (as Fricka, with James Levine conducting his first Das Rheingold at the Met).
In 1998 she added additional dramatic soprano roles, debuting as Leonore in Fidelio with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, again under the direction of Barenboim, and also appearing as Ortrud in a new Lohengrin production at the Bavarian State Opera.
[citation needed] In 2000, Meier appeared again at Bayreuth, performing the role of Sieglinde in Die Walküre in the "Millennium Ring" at the 2000 festival staged by Jürgen Flimm and conducted by Giuseppe Sinopoli with Plácido Domingo.
In 2001 at the opening of the Munich Opera Festival, the singer made her debut in the role of Didon in Hector Berlioz's Les Troyens with Zubin Mehta conducting.
She performed in Bach's St Matthew Passion and toured throughout Europe, Russia and the United States with a recital program featuring works by Brahms, Schubert and Hugo Wolf.
She returned to the opera stage in 2004–2005, including appearances as Carmen in a new production at the Semper Oper in Dresden directed by Katarina Lauterbach.
In 2005, she appeared again as Isolde, this time in a new production at the Opéra Bastille in Paris, staged by Peter Sellars and conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen.
The New York Times wrote:The role of Kundry is that of a lone woman surrounded by men, but Waltraud Meier made it the star turn of the evening.
In the London Daily Telegraph Rupert Christiansen wrote:She looked wonderfully elegant and was in good voice – some wild top notes seemed a small price to pay for her total musical and dramatic involvement in Leonore's fate.