Verrett, Shirley (1931—)

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Verrett, Shirley (1931—)

American soprano. Name variations: known professionally as Shirley Verrett-Carter until 1963. Born on May 31, 1931, in New Orleans, Louisiana; one of the six children (two girls and four boys) of Leon Verrett (a building contractor) and Elvira (Harris) Verrett; attended primary and secondary school in Oxnard, California; received an Associate in Arts degree from Ventura (California) College, in 1951; studied with Anna Fitziu and Hall Johnson; studied with Marian Szekely-Freschl at Juilliard School of Music, New York City, graduating in 1961; married second husband Louis Frank LoMonaco (a painter and illustrator), on December 10, 1963; no children.

Debuted in Britten's The Rape of Lucretia in Yellow Springs, Ohio (1957); made New York debut as Irina in Weill's Lost in the Stars (1958); appeared as Athaliah, Queen of Judea, in world premiere at Lincoln Center (1964); Teatro alla Scala debut (1966); debuted at Metropolitan (1968) where she continued to sing.

Hailed by music critic Alan Rich as one of the foremost singers of her time, mezzo-soprano Shirley Verrett is acclaimed as a recitalist and orchestra soloist and as an opera star. Since her professional debut in 1958, she has performed concerts in the major musical capitals of the world and has graced the stages of the world's foremost opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera in New York, La Scala in Milan, and the Bolshoi in Moscow. In 1996, after nearly four decades, Verrett gave up performing and joined the faculty at the University of Michigan as the James Earl Jones Distinguished University Professor of Music.

Born in 1931 in New Orleans, Louisiana, Verrett was part of a large and musical family; all five of her siblings either sang or played instruments. Her father, the choirmaster at the Seventh-Day

Adventist church in New Orleans, provided her early training. Later, after the family had moved to California, Verrett began more formal voice lessons. Despite her obvious talent, she was convinced by her father to pursue a less precarious career in business. At his urging, she received a business degree at Ventura College and then opened a real estate office in Los Angeles. Although the business prospered during its first year, Verrett was still drawn to music and began voice training with Metropolitan Opera soprano Anna Fitziu . In 1955, Verrett made an appearance on Arthur Godfrey's "Talent Scouts," a television show for young performers, singing an aria from Samson and Delilah. Her performance caught the attention of Marian Szekely-Freschl , who was at the time teaching voice at New York's Juilliard School of Music. Verrett subsequently became a student of Szekely-Fresch's at the prestigious school and remained there for six years, receiving financial assistance through various awards and scholarships.

In 1957, while still a student, Verrett made her operatic debut at the Antioch College Shakespearean Festival in Yellow Springs, Ohio, singing featured roles in Benjamin Britten's The Rape of Lucretia and Kurt Weill's Lost in the Stars. She also sang Weill for her professional operatic debut at New York City Opera in 1958. That year as well, she performed in her first recital at New York's Town Hall, singing arias by Handel, Bach, and Mozart, as well as works by Chausson, Brahms, Purcell, and Persichetti. A critic for the New York Herald Tribune found the performance promising and Verrett's voice refreshingly free of some of the mannerisms typical of the mezzo range.

Although Verrett would become known for her interpretation of Carmen in the well-known Bizet opera, it took some time for her to win over the critics. Her first performance in the role, at the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, in July 1962, was criticized as too intellectual, with not enough exuberance. However, a performance at Moscow's Bolshoi Theater in 1963 was greeted with a 20-minute ovation. When she finally sang the role of Carmen with the New York City Opera Company at City Center in October 1964, critic Louis Biancolli, of the New York World-Telegram and Sun, proclaimed it "one of the most seductive Carmens I have ever seen, and one of the best vocally and artistically. Miss Verrett didn't portray the role, she was the role."

In 1966, Verrett sang Carmen for her debut at Milan's La Scala and performed Ulrica in Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera for her first appearance at London's Covent Garden, where she was cheered. On September 21, 1968, she debuted at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, again as Carmen. She continued to sing at the Met regularly for more than two decades and made musical history when she sang both Cassandra and Dido at the opening night of the Metropolitan Opera's new production of Berlioz's Les Troyens. Verrett also appeared at the Metropolitan as both Norma and Azucena in Bellini's Norma, and as Tosca, Eboli, Lady Macbeth, Ammeris, and Azucena.

Shirley Verrett has been particularly acclaimed for her ability as a singing actress, and for her unique and varied repertoire, which embraces some of the most demanding roles for a dramatic soprano, such as Norma, Lady Macbeth, Medea, Tosca, Aïda, Desdemona, and Leonore in Beethoven's Fidelio. The singer, however, was slow to add to her operatic repertory. "The real danger in any kind of music is learning and singing too quickly," she told Eric Salzman in an interview for the New York Herald Tribune in 1963. "I try to work slowly and get inside the music. I want the notes to come easily and naturally; to be in gola, in the throat. When the notes are firmly in the throat, then I can get inside the style or the character of the part. The point is, I don't just want to sing beautiful tones; I want them to make musical sense; I want to find out and project what the tones mean."

Since 1964, Verrett has recorded a number of albums, the first of which was a selection of hymns, How Great Thou Art, Precious Lord. Another interesting departure from her usual repertoire was her 1965 album, Seven Popular Spanish Songs, and a 1966 release of folk and protest songs, Singin' in the Storm, which Howard Klein of The New York Times called "powerful stuff." Verrett did not record Carmen, however, or some of her other more popular operatic roles.

Verrett ventured to Broadway in 1994, to perform the role of Nettie Fowler in Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel at New York's Lincoln Center. The production won five Tony Awards and garnered Verrett a nomination for the Outer Critics Circle Award. Her busy performing schedule did not prevent her from devoting time to a number of charitable and humanitarian activities. Verrett is a life member of the NAACP and performed a benefit concert for the organization in Carnegie Hall. In 1989, she and Placido Domingo sang a benefit concert for UNESCO in Paris to aid refugee children in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. She has also sung benefit concerts to raise money for AIDS research.

In her more recent position as a professor of voice at the University of Michigan School of Music, Verrett encourages her music students to concentrate on becoming fully educated. "I have now come to believe that specializing too early is counter-productive and can stunt your growth," she told a group of entering freshmen in 1997. "I have heard many a voice professor talk about 'the voice' as if it were detached from the physical body, the emotions, and especially the mind. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Your mind is your greatest asset."