canariasesmusica

I have always admired Maria Ewing. I know she was controversial but the power of her performances was beyond any doubt. Here is a semblance of her life from presto music.com. Born in Detroit to an African-American father and Dutch mother, Maria Ewing trained at the Cleveland Institute of Music and in New York and Ohio, giving her first professional performance at the Ravinia Festival in Illinois in 1973. In the early part of her career she concentrated on lyric mezzo repertoire, and three years later made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Cherubino in Günther Rennert’s production of Le Nozze di Figaro, opposite Kiri Te Kanawa and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as the Almavivas. She went on to sing in the house’s premiere productions of Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites (as Blanche de la Force) and Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (as Katerina Ismailova). Ewing made her Glyndebourne debut, as Dorabella in Così fan tutte, in 1978; she became a regular fixture at the Festival over the nex...