Soprano Lucina Amara died the other day at the age of 99. I heard her once, singing "One More Kiss" in a semi-staged performance of Follies at City Center in 2007, when she was 81. She sounded pretty damn good.
She sang at the Met from 1950 to 1991, a very long run. She was a solid, dependable singer, and since she knew so many roles and rarely left Manhattan, she was often called at the last minute to fill in for an ailing colleague. According to her New York Times obit, of her 748 Met performances, 54 were as a substitute.
My favorite story about her - - she wasn't a particularly glamorous presence but general manager Rudolf Bing needed her and thought it was important to throw her a high-profile role now and then. He was planning a new production of Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes and thought she was absolutely perfect to play the schoolmarmish female lead, Ellen Orford. He had planned on superstar Georg Solti to conduct that show but Solti didn't want Amara, he wanted someone else. Bing kept Amara and scrapped Solti (it ended up being the Met debut of another great conductor, Colin Davis).
Here's an amateur video of her singing Marietta's Lied from Die Tote Stadt by Korngold and "O del mio Amato ben" by Donaudy. Other sopranos may have had more of a shimmer on the high notes in the Korngold but she sounds effortless and secure and she has just the right amount of gooeyness for this Viennese treat. It's worth noting that she was 65 at the time!
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