Hunt Lieberson, Lorraine

▪ 2007

 American mezzo-soprano (b. March 1, 1954, near San Francisco, Calif.—d. July 3, 2006, Santa Fe, N.M.), was known for her rich voice. meticulous artistry, and intense appeal to audiences. She studied viola and voice at San Jose (Calif.) State University, and began her musical career as a professional violist before joining the opera program at the Boston Conservatory. On a number of occasions Hunt Lieberson's career was linked with the work of the avant-garde director Peter Sellars. Her first great success came in Sellars's 1985 summer-festival production of Handel's Giulio Cesare. She sang Donna Elvira in Sellars's production of Don Giovanni (1987), and she performed in his staging of two Bach cantatas in London in 2001. She made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1999 in John Harbison's The Great Gatsby. Her repertoire was unusually wide, but she often chose to sing Baroque operas and works of contemporary composers. One of these composers was John Adams, whose El Niño she helped premiere at the Châtelet in Paris in 2000. Another was Peter Lieberson, her husband from 1999, whom she met while working on the first performance of his opera Ashoka's Dream at the Santa Fe Opera (1997) and who later wrote for her Neruda Songs, based on the poems of Pablo Neruda, which she premiered with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2005.

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