For forty-one consecutive seasons, Lucine Amara adorned the stage of the Metropolitan Opera. Her elegant stage presence, radiant femininity, and unfailing sense of style ranked her among the most distinguished and most loved stars during what has come to be known as the Golden Age of the Metropolitan Opera. The voice possessed a lush warmth and most appealing and ineffable rare beauty, which it retains to this day. This is even more remarkable when one ponders that there was no part of the repertoire she could not perform with great distinction; performances which have never been surpassed. She was particularly admired in the title roles of Aïda, Madama Butterfly, Micäela in Carmen, Mimi in La Bohéme, Nedda in I Pagliacci, and Leonora in Il Trovatore; her most subtle portrayal of Countess Almaviva giving way to the lirico spirito of Leonora in La Forza del Destino. She made her debut at the Metropollitan Opera as the Celestial Voice in Verdi’s Don Carlo on November 6, 1950, the opening night of Sir Rudolf Bing’s inaugural season as general manager.The development of Lucine Amara’s career reads like a fairy tale. She was born in Hartford, Connecticut of Armenian heritage, before moving to San Francisco where she was raised. As a young child, she studied violin with Bertha Roth in Pontiac, Michigan. After her move to California, a providential introduction to Stella Eisner-Eyn at the Community Music School in San Francisco led to seven years of vocal study. She later augmented her vocal studies at the Vocal Academy of the West with Richard Bonelli. She subsequently enrolled at the University of Southern California, where she met Carl Ebert, at the time director of the Glyndebourne Festival in England, who cast her in the leading role of Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos. At virtually this same time, Pierre Monteaux, who was to become such a great influence in her life, asked her to make her concert debut with the San Francisco Symphony.
In 1950, she auditioned for Sir Rudolf Bing and won a contract that led to her aforementioned debut at the Metropolitan Opera. During her first season at the Met, she also sang Wellgunde and Inez. The following season, she again sang on opening night: this time the High Priestess in a new production of Aïda. Only one month later, she sang the first of thirty-eight performances as Nedda in I Pagliacci, a role she would later record twice in complete versions and which have achieved legendary status with the help of the Canios of Franco Corelli and Richard Tucker. Then, in 1952, after performing the role of Frasquita in Tyrone Guthrie's famous production of Bizet’s Carmen, she was immediately promoted to the role of Micäela. As a result, she overnight joined the hallowed and very elite ranks of prima donna. The rest is, as they say, history.
Elliot Norton in the Boston Globe once commented: “Miss Amara was in magnificent form; she sang not just brilliantly, but perfectly. And for Miss Amara's acting we have nothing but praise. She blends voice and passion into a single tightly unified performance. You live with her, soar with her voice and her feelings, and weep when she sings.” Time Magazine once averred “she brought to the stage the kind of dazzling vocal splendor that made the Met famous.” And the Christian Science Monitor perhaps hit the proverbial nail on the head when it stated “we found depth of characterization — a sense of fire that turns a first-rate singer into a prima donna.” The London Times proclaimed Miss Amara “the greatest lyric soprano of our time.” Enviable and accurate praise, all of it.
The Musica Bella Orchestra is proud and honored to have Miss Amara as our guest artist on January 23, 2005.