From the Vaults: Shirley Verrett on WNYC
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
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In this 1993 edition of WNYC's New York and Company, the late soprano and mezzo-soprano Shirley Verrett looks back on her remarkable and varied career in the opera world.
Courtesy of NYPR Archives.
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Listening to the streaming of the new Don Carlo last Monday and the disastrous Eboli, I was reminded of the fabulous evenings when Miss Verrett was Eboli, Norma, Lady Macbeth, Dalilah,etc. Ah! Those were the days!
SHIRLEY VERRETT died yesterday, Friday, November 5th, at age 79 of a heart attack, after months of illness. I have seen her outmatch all former interpreters of the role of Carmen in her sheer dark, sumptuous full-bodied voice combined with a physical appearance Hollywood-glamourish and powerful top notes, contending well in normally dramatic soprano territory, and a musicianship which made the most of every role she tackled. At Juilliard she studied in the late 1950s and acquired her diploma in voice in 1961. I have seen her as Eboli in Don Carlo, Dalilah, Azucena, Norma, Adalgiza, Aida, Lady Macbeth and Tosca. In each she was totally convincing, and sometimes
awesome and overpowering. I have heard of her Desdemona with the Boston Opera Company, and, to Wagnerians a major triumph, her Venus at Bayreuth. I would have wished to be at those performances,
her assaying a role being so close to definitive.
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