Tatiana Troyanos
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tatiana Troyanos (September 12, 1938 – August 21, 1993) was an American mezzo-soprano.
Born in New York City, Troyanos went to Forest Hills High School in Forest Hills, New York. In high school, her nickname was "Totsie".
In 1963, Troyanos made her professional operatic debut at the New York City Opera as Hippolyta in Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream.
A mainstay of the Metropolitan Opera from 1976, she was internationally revered for her uniquely sensual, burnished sound, her versatility and beauty, as well as the thrilling intensity of all her performances. In the early 80s, Troyanos appeared in several opening night performances at that house including Adalgisa in Vincenzo Bellini's Norma, Octavian in Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, and Didon in Hector Berlioz's Les Troyens.
Troyanos also enjoyed an equally versatile career as a recording artist, appearing in the title role of Sir Georg Solti's acclaimed recording of Georges Bizet's Carmen, Cherubino in Karl Böhm's definitive 1968 recording of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro, and as Anita in Leonard Bernstein's high-profile operatic recording of West Side Story among others.
Troyanos died from liver cancer, an affliction she successfully concealed from the vast majority of her colleagues, at the age of 54 in New York City. In an eerie coincidence, Troyanos was one of three female opera stars of international stature who succumbed to cancer in 1993 in or near her 54th year. The other singers were sopranos Lucia Popp and Arleen Augér. In 1994, the Metropolitan Opera performed a concert in memory of Troyanos, during which Music Director James Levine remarked "The idea that we are gathered here ... to pay memorial tribute to Tatiana Troyanos is incomprehensible. What it means, of course, is that our Metropolitan Opera family has lost one of the most important, beloved artists and friends in its entire history."
