- NEW YORK: Shirley Verrett, an acclaimed American mezzo-soprano and soprano praised for her blazing intensity during a career that spanned four decades, died in Ann Arbor, Mich.
- She was 79.
Verrett, one of the top opera singers of the 1970s and 1980s, had been suffering from heart trouble, said Jack Mastroianni of IMG Artists, who was notified of her death by the Metropolitan Opera Guild. Born in New Orleans, she was renowned for a blazing intensity in her performances as a mezzo for much of her career and a soprano in her later years.
She battled racial prejudice in a predominantly white European-centered art form during a 40-year biracial marriage, according to her autobiography. Verrett studied at the Juilliard School in New York and was a 1961 winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions.
Known early in her career as Shirley Verrett-Carter, she made her professional debut in 1957 and a year later appeared for the first time at the New York City Opera as Irina in Weill's "Lost in the Stars." She also appeared in the first televised Young People's Concert by conductor Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic from the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
A debut followed at London's Royal Opera in 1966 as Ulrica in Verdi's "Un Ballo in Maschera," and two years later she made her Metropolitan Opera debut in the title role of Bizet's "Carmen," a role she has sung to acclaim at the Spoleto Festival in 1962.
