Shirley Verrett

Shirley Verrett was born on the thirty-first of May 1931 in New Orleans, Louisiana, the daughter of Leon Solomon Verrett — a building contractor and the choirmaster of the family's Seventh-day Adventist church — and Elvira Harris. Raised in a devout Seventh-day Adventist household, she first lifted her voice in her father's choir, and the family later moved to California, where her gift was nurtured amid faith and song.

Verrett's ascent to the concert stage was deliberate and hard-won. In 1961 she won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, and through the 1960s she built an international reputation in the great mezzo-soprano roles of Verdi and Donizetti, appearing at La Scala, the Bolshoi, and Covent Garden. She made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1968 as Carmen, a role that became one of her signatures.

Possessed of a rare soprano sfogato instrument, Verrett moved boldly between mezzo and soprano repertoire — Amneris and Aida, Eboli, Azucena, Norma, Lady Macbeth, and Tosca among them. She sang Tosca opposite Luciano Pavarotti in a celebrated 1978 Live from the Met broadcast, and in 1994 she made her Broadway debut as Nettie Fowler in the Tony-winning revival of Carousel. In 1996 she joined the University of Michigan as a distinguished professor of voice.

Shirley Verrett died on the fifth of November 2010 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, at the age of seventy-nine. From a church choir in New Orleans to the world's grandest stages, she carried her people's dignity in her voice — and it endures.