Roberta Peters, soprano with a dramatic entrance, dies
Roberta Peters, the Bronx-born coloratura soprano who at 20 was catapulted to stardom by a phone call, a subway ride and a Metropolitan Opera debut — her first public performance anywhere — all in the space of five hours, died on Wednesday at her home in Rye, N.Y. She was 86.
Ms. Peters, who would sing with the Met 515 times over 35 vigorous years, was internationally renowned for her high, silvery voice (in private, she could hit a high A, two and a half octaves above middle C); her clarion diction in a flurry of languages; her attractive stage presence; and, by virtue of the fact that she and television came to prominence at about the same time, her wide popular appeal.
In addition to the Met, with which she appeared regularly from 1950 to 1985 — one of the longest associations of any singer with a major opera company — Ms. Peters was heard at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Cincinnati Opera, the Vienna State Opera, Covent Garden and elsewhere.
Enlisted to sing that part in 1950 as a last-minute substitute, Ms. Peters was propelled, with no rehearsal, onto the Met stage and into a stellar career.
Known for taking meticulous care of her voice, she continued to sing in recital until well into her 70s, a good two decades past the de facto retirement age in her line of work.
At midcentury, when it was more customary to encounter opera stars on television than it is today, she was seen on a string of shows, including “The Voice of Firestone,” “The Mike Douglas Show” and in particular “The Ed Sullivan Show,” on which she appeared scores of times in the 1950s and ‘60s.
Critics sometimes faulted Ms. Peters’ singing for a certain lack of intensity, but her flageolet tones made an airy counterweight to the vocal heft of Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland, whose style was becoming the norm for sopranos at midcentury.
From the age of 13, she had trained for an operatic career as an athlete trains for the Olympics.
For years, her weekly regimen included not only voice and foreign language lessons but also instruction in ballet, acting and fencing, as well as a strength and conditioning program under the direct supervision of Joseph Pilates, the originator of the Pilates exercise method.
In late 1949, Ms. Peters (she had shortened her surname at her teacher’s suggestion) was taken on by Sol Hurok, the high-wattage impresario.
Signed to a Met contract, Ms. Peters was scheduled to make her debut with the company as the Queen of the Night in January 1951.
In another, for American Express — part of its long-running “Do you know me?” campaign — she hailed a cab by singing out “Tax-eee!” in a descending major third, from G to E flat.
The closest thing to drama in Ms. Peters’ personal life was her very brief marriage to the great baritone Robert Merrill, whom she wed on March 30, 1952, and from whom she was divorced on June 26, 1952.
For all the acclaim that cloaked Ms. Peters, and for all the laurels heaped upon her — including a National Medal of Arts in 1998 — perhaps nothing could match the electricity of that long-ago November night, when a 20-year-old from the Bronx stepped onto the Met stage an unknown and came back as Roberta Peters.