Ewing sang 96 performances for the Metropolitan Opera, together with starring in director and then-husband Peter Corridor's 1986 manufacturing of 'Carmen.'
Maria Ewing and Rebecca Corridor
Dave Benett/Getty Pictures
Maria Ewing, a soprano and mezzo-soprano famous for intense performances who grew to become the spouse of director Peter Corridor and the mom of actor-director Rebecca Corridor, has died at age 71.
Ewing died Sunday at her dwelling in Detroit, spokeswoman Bryna Rifkin stated Monday.
Born in Detroit to a Dutch mom and an African American father, Ewing was the youngest of 4 daughters.
“She was an awfully gifted artist who by the sheer pressure of her expertise and can catapulted herself to probably the most rarefied heights of the worldwide opera world,” her household stated in an announcement.
Ewing made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1976 in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) and starred as Blanche de la Drive in a brand new John Dexter manufacturing of Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites in 1977. She sang 96 Met performances till her finale as Marie in Berg’s Wozzeck in 1997, a span that included a six-year interruption triggered by a spat with Met inventive director James Levine.
Ewing met Peter Corridor in 1978 when she sang Dorabella in a staging of Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte at Britain’s Glyndebourne Competition directed by Corridor and led by conductor Bernard Haitink. Ewing married Corridor, a founding father of the Royal Shakespeare Firm after which director of Britain’s Nationwide Theatre, in 1982.
4 years later, her husband directed her on the Met the place she sang the title position in a brand new staging of Bizert’s Carmen.
“Removed from the same old try at a fiery sexpot, her Carmen was simply bored, even sullen, her come-hither being a problem to males to awaken her curiosity,” Related Press critic Mary Campbell wrote.
However Ewing severed ties with the Met after the corporate scrapped a contemplated telecast of Carmen along with her, then broadcast a 1987 efficiency of the manufacturing starring Agnes Baltsa. Ewing responded by withdrawing from appearances on the Ravinia Competition exterior Chicago, the place Levine was music director.
“The Met has no manners,″ Ewing and Corridor instructed the Chicago Tribune.
Corridor directed Ewing in 1986 within the title position of Strauss’ Salome on the LA Opera, during which she stripped to completely nude on the finish of the Dance of the Seven Veils. The staging traveled in 1988 to London’s Royal Opera and the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and a telecast of the manufacturing was launched commercially on DVD.
“Maria Ewing, who ventured the title position in Richard Strauss’ Salome for the brand new Music Heart Opera on Thursday evening, is a Theaterviech,” Martin Bernheimer wrote within the Los Angeles Instances, utilizing a German phrase for “theater beast.” “She is, in actual fact, a major and wondrous instance of the uncommon breed. She is a beautiful, frail, seemingly nervous younger girl blessed with a devastating pout, hypnotic eyes and a searing thoughts. She additionally occurs to command a fairly delicate, slender and reedy mezzo-soprano that thins out a bit on the prolonged high.”
Corridor additionally directed Ewing in Nozze in Chicago in 1987.
They divorced in 1990 and Peter Corridor died in 2017 at age 87.
Rebecca Corridor, born in 1982, has starred in movies that embrace Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon and The Awakening. Her directing debut Passing, starring Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga, was launched final 12 months.
Ewing is also survived by sisters Norma Koleta, Carol Pancratz and Francis Ewing.