Shirley Verrett

Shirley Verrett was born in New Orleans in May 1931, the daughter of a building contractor, and trained at the Juilliard School with Marion Szekely-Freschl. She made her professional début with the New York City Opera in 1958 as Irina in Britten’s *The Rape of Lucretia*, but her international breakthrough came with her Spoleto Festival appearance in 1962 as Carmen.

Her career divided into two phases. As a mezzo-soprano through the 1960s she sang the dramatic mezzo repertoire — Carmen, Eboli in *Don Carlo*, Azucena, Amneris, Dalila in *Samson et Dalila*, the title role in *La favorite*, Adalgisa in *Norma* (in which she partnered Joan Sutherland at the Metropolitan in 1970). In the 1970s she moved into the dramatic soprano repertoire — Norma, the title role in *Tosca*, Lady Macbeth, Aida, Selika in *L’Africaine*, Iphigenia in Gluck’s operas, and Cassandra and Dido in Berlioz’s *Les Troyens*. The Metropolitan Opera’s 1973 *Les Troyens* under Rafael Kubelík — in which she sang Cassandra and was scheduled to sing Dido in the same performance, eventually doing so when Christa Ludwig fell ill — became one of the legendary individual feats of post-war opera.

Verrett taught at the University of Michigan from 1996 and was a regular masterclass teacher across the United States and Europe. She died in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in November 2010. Music Preserved’s archive includes a range of her Verdi, Wagner and Berlioz work.