The world has lost a great and treasured artist. She received a Tony nomination for Cabaret in 1987 and a Drama Desk nomination for ALNM at City Opera. Most of her performing career was in opera, where she was acclaimed not only for her lush mezzo voice but also for the quality of her acting.
Loved her as an opera singer. She was a smoky and sultry Carmen, mad haunted Klytamnestra in Elektra, and great in Verdi roles like Amneris, Eboli and Mistress Quickly in Falstaff, as well as doing some great work with Wagner roles like Fricka in the Ring Cycle. She was a committed actress as well as a wonderful singer. She will be missed but will live on in recordings that preserve her artistry.
RIP to an amazingly versatile and superb artist with one of the most interesting careers in the history of opera. She debuted at the Met as Leonora in TROVATORE in 1944 (at 22!!) and performed well into the 1990s.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
One of the critics said that her Armfeldt was the first time anyone could understand all the lyrics to Liaisons.
If anyone ever tells you that you put too much Parmesan cheese on your pasta, stop talking to them. You don't need that kind of negativity in your life.
So grateful that we have her Mdme. Armfeldt preserved on video. It felt as though the part had been written especially for her. Every line reading was just perfect.