Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Luminous Mezzo, Dies at 52 (Published 2006) (2024)

The mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, who won near universal praise from critics and audiences for her courageous, insightful and deeply affecting artistry, died on Monday at her home in Santa Fe, N.M. She was 52.

Her death was reported by Alec C. Treuhaft, senior vice president of IMG Artists, speaking on behalf of the singer's husband, the composer Peter Lieberson. Mr. Treuhaft would only say that Ms. Hunt Lieberson had died "after a long illness."

For the last 18 months she had sung only sporadically, canceling most performances, citing lingering problems from an injury to her lower back as the cause. Yet she had had a public bout with breast cancer some years ago, which caused her to withdraw from, among other major performances, the premiere of Kaija Saariaho's opera "L'Amour de Loin" at the Salzburg Festival in 2000. Mr. Treuhaft said that even close associates of Ms. Hunt Lieberson, an intensely private person, did not realize that her illness had become so critical in recent weeks.

If she rarely spoke of her private life, few artists have brought such emotional vulnerability to their work, whether it was her sultry portrayal of Myrtle Wilson, the mistress of wealthy Tom Buchanan in John Harbison's "Great Gatsby," the role of her 1999 Metropolitan Opera debut, or her shattering performances several years ago in two Bach cantatas for solo voice and orchestra, staged by the director Peter Sellars, seen in Lincoln Center's New Visions series, with the Orchestra of Emmanuel Music, Craig Smith conducting.

In Cantata No. 82, "Ich Habe Genug" ("I Have Enough"), Ms. Hunt Lieberson, wearing a flimsy hospital gown and thick woolen socks, her face contorted with pain and yearning, portrayed a terminally ill patient who, no longer able to endure treatments, wants to let go and be comforted by Jesus. During one consoling aria, "Schlummert ein, ihr matten Augen" ("Slumber now, weary eyes"), she yanked tubes from her arms and sang the spiraling melody with an uncanny blend of ennobling grace and unbearable sadness.

Still, vocal artistry alone could not account for the impact of Ms. Hunt Lieberson's performances and her consequent desire to keep her private life private, as Mr. Harbison, quoted in an article in The New York Times last year, explained. "Lorraine gives so much of her inner soul," he said, "that that's what she owes the public."

Ms. Hunt Lieberson had a maverick career. She brought uncompromising integrity to her choice of roles and repertory, was a champion of Baroque operas and of living composers, and preferred to work in close-knit conditions with directors and ensembles who shared her artistic aims, especially at festivals like Glyndebourne in England and Aix-en-Provence in France.

That she began her professional life as a freelance violist and did not focus fully on singing until she was 26 may account for the musical depth and intelligence of her vocal artistry. One of her closest colleagues, Craig Smith, the Boston-based conductor and choir director, said as much in a 2004 profile of Ms. Hunt Lieberson by Charles Michener in The New Yorker. "There's something viola-like about the rich graininess of her singing, about her ability to sound a tone from nothing," he was quoted as saying, adding, "There's no sudden switching on of the voice, no click."

It was typical of the self-effacing Ms. Hunt Lieberson to be drawn to the secondary role of Myrtle in "The Great Gatsby" for her Met debut. Her second appearance in a Met production came in 2003 when she sang the role of Dido in the new staging of Berlioz's epic "Les Troyens." With this luminous, stylistically informed and emotionally true portrayal she showed that she could galvanize the Met's stage in a major role. She was scheduled to return this coming season in a new production by Mark Morris of Gluck's "Orfeo ed Euridice," singing Orfeo.

Lorraine Hunt was born on March 1, 1954, in San Francisco to musical parents: Randolph Hunt, a music teacher and a conductor of community ensembles and operas, and Marcia Hunt, a contralto and a voice teacher. Her parents survive her, along with two siblings, Stan Hunt and Susan Hunt. Another sister, Alexis, died of cancer six years ago.

Her taskmaster father was single-minded in his desire to develop her musical gifts, arranging first for her to study the piano and then the violin, she said in the New Yorker profile. At 12 she switched to viola and began playing in youth orchestras and singing in the high school choir.

She studied voice and viola at San Jose State University and, upon graduation, became a freelance player in the Bay Area noted for her expertise in contemporary music. She played in a cutting-edge string quartet called "Novaj Kordoj" (Esperanto for "New Strings"). When a French horn player she was dating got a job with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, she moved with him to Boston, soon becoming a valued freelance musician. She was particularly drawn to the music program at Emmanuel Church in the Back Bay section of Boston, where Mr. Smith conducted the orchestra and choir. But during these years she also studied voice at Boston Conservatory.

Her breakthrough as a singer came with the Pepsico Summerfare festival in Purchase, N.Y., in 1985 when she was cast by Mr. Sellars in his production of Handel's "Giulio Cesare." Her role was Sesto, the avenging son of Pompey, though in this production, zapped to the present day Middle East, Sesto was a terrorist armed with an Uzi. While Mr. Sellars's work was predictably controversial, Ms. Hunt Lieberson emerged as an exciting vocal talent.

For the next decade her career thrived as she collaborated with the early-music conductor Nicholas McGegan and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra on a series of Harmonia Mundi recordings of Handel operas and oratorios ("Susanna," "Theodora," "Ariodante"); took part in Mr. Sellars's updated production of Mozart's "Don Giovanni" and, later, his triumphant staging of "Theodora" at Glyndebourne; and worked with William Christie and other major musicians.

She met Mr. Lieberson in 1997 when he selected her to sing in the premiere of his opera "Ashoka's Dream" at the Santa Fe Opera. The story tells of an Indian emperor in the third century B.C. who renounces violence after converting to Buddhism and inspires trust and generosity among his people. Ms. Hunt Lieberson sang Triraksha, Ashoka's consort.

She and Mr. Lieberson, a practicing Buddhist since his graduate-student days at Columbia, were immediately drawn to each other. At the time he was married with three daughters. After an understandably upsetting divorce for Mr. Lieberson, he and Ms. Hunt Lieberson were married in 1999. Their closeness was apparent to anyone who observed them onstage at Symphony Hall in Boston in November during the ovations for "Neruda Songs," Mr. Lieberson's setting of five Spanish sonnets by Pablo Neruda, each a reflection of a different aspect of love.

The performance, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Levine, was repeated a few days later at Carnegie Hall. Every phrase of this emotionally unguarded, intricate and haunting work seemed fashioned by the composer for his wife's distinctive voice. It would be her last New York performance.