Phyllis Curtin (née Smith; December 3, 1921 – June 5, 2016) was an American soprano and academic teacher who had an active career in operas and concerts from the early 1950s through the 1980s. She is known for her creation of roles in operas by Carlisle Floyd, such as the title role in Susannah and Catherine Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights.[1] She was a dedicated song recitalist, who retired from singing in 1984. She was named Boston University's Dean Emerita, College of Fine Arts in 1991.[1]
She performed several other roles with the company over the next seven years, including Countess Almaviva in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro (1947). In 1950, Curtin performed in the inaugural year of the Peabody Mason Concerts in Boston. In 1953 she joined the roster of principal sopranos at the New York City Opera (NYCO) at the invitation of Joseph Rosenstock. She made her debut with the company on October 22, 1953, portraying three roles (Fräulein Bürstner, Frau Grubach, and Leni) in the U.S. premiere of Einem's The Trial.[5]
She appeared as Thérèse in the American premiere of Poulenc's Les mamelles de Tirésias at Brandeis University in 1953. She returned to Brandeis two years later to portray the title role in Milhaud's Médée.[1]
Curtin was a professor of voice at the School of Music at Yale University from 1974-1983. She was Artistic Advisor at the Opera Institute at the Boston University College of Fine Arts School of Music, where she held a Deanship of the Schools for the Arts, as well as Artist-in-Residence at the Tanglewood Music Center where she taught voice for more than fifty years.
From 1979–83 she was the master of Yale's Branford College, making her that college's first female master, despite Branford fellows asking Yale to choose a "real master" instead.[8] Curtin was dean of Boston University’s College of Fine Arts from 1983 to 1991, and founded its Opera Institute in 1987. As professor Emerita at Boston University's Opera Institute, Curtin taught a series of masterclasses at the school each semester.[1]
Personal life
She married Philip Curtin, a history professor, in 1946. In April 1954 Life Magazine devoted three pages to pictures of her, describing her "long-limbed, lush-voiced and intense" account of the Dance of the Seven Veils in Strauss's Salome. Soon afterwards her marriage was dissolved. In 1956 she married Gene Cook, a photographer with Life Magazine. He died in 1986.[4] The couple had one child, Claudia Madeleine, born 1961.
Curtin died at her home in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, on June 5, 2016, aged 94, having suffered from rheumatoid arthritis and circulatory ailments.[4]
Video and audio recordings
In 1995, VAI released, on compact discs, the 1962 performance of Susannah, from New Orleans, which co-starred Norman Treigle and Richard Cassilly. VAI and other record companies have released other CDs featuring Curtin. In 1988, Kultur published a video cassette recording of the 1968 The Bell Telephone Hour program, "Opera: Two to Six".
She can be seen in staged excerpts from Faust and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. VAI later released several Bell Telephone Hour DVDs featuring Curtin. In 2007 VAI released a DVD featuring Curtin in the soprano role (i.e., the Latin text) in Britten's War Requiem. This 1963 performance by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Erich Leinsdorf at Tanglewood was the work's American premiere.[1]
Tributes
In 1976, President Gerald Ford invited her to sing for a White House dinner honoring West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.[6]
Curtin served on the National Council for the Arts, and in 1994 was designated a U.S. Ambassador for the Arts, a new honor given former council members.[6]
She received Wellesley College's Alumnae Achievement Award and BU's College of Fine Arts Distinguished Faculty Award. She also held a number of honorary degrees in music and the humanities, including an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from West Virginia Wesleyan College awarded in 1985.[6]
The Paley Center for Media in Manhattan showed the 1956 NBC-TV production of Così fan tutte on January 19, 2008, 50 years after its original 1958 airing. Curtin sang Fiordiligi in this production. The screening was followed by a conversation with the soprano and music critic Martin Bernheimer.[6]
In 2017, a portrait of her was unveiled at the dining hall in Branford College, which previously only had portraits of men.[8]
