DeGaetani, Jan(ice)

DeGaetani, Jan(ice) , remarkable American mezzo-soprano; b. Massillon, Ohio, July 10, 1933; d. Rochester, N.Y., Sept. 15, 1989. She studied at the Juilliard School of Music in N.Y. with Sergius Kagan. Upon graduation, she joined the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, with which she developed a peculiar technique essential for performance of ultramodern vocal works. She devoted herself to a detailed study of Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire, which became one of her finest interpretations. She mastered the most challenging techniques of new vocal music, including fractional intervals. She also mastered foreign languages to be able to perform a wide European repertoire. She became a faithful interpreter of the most demanding works by modern composers, among them Boulez, Crumb, Druckman, Maxwell Davies, Ligeti, Carter, and Davidovsky. She also developed a fine repertoire of Renaissance songs, and soon became a unique phenomenon as a lieder artist, excelling in an analytical capacity to express the most minute vocal modulations of the melodic line while parsing the words with exquisite intellectual penetration of their meaning, so that even experienced critics found themselves at a loss of superlatives to describe her artistry. From 1973 she taught at the Eastman School of Music. With N. and R. Lloyd, she publ. the useful vol. The Complete Sightsinger (1980).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire