Manuela Hoelterhoff, who won a Pulitzer Prize at The Wall Street Journal in 1983 for her wide-ranging arts criticism and later wrote a trenchant book about the backstage world of opera, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. She was 77.
The artist Marilyn Perry, a close friend, said the death, at a hospital, was from esophageal cancer.
Ms. Hoelterhoff, who was born into the ruins of post-World War II Germany and grew up in the New York suburbs, spent more than 20 years with The Journal. She served variously as a critic, arts editor, book editor and member of the editorial board.
