Mignon Dunn

Mignon Dunn, born June 17, 1928, in Memphis, Tennessee, is an American dramatic mezzo-soprano and voice teacher. She grew up in both Tyronza, Arkansas, and Memphis, and received her vocal training from Karin Branzell and Beverley Peck Johnson. Before establishing herself in opera, Dunn appeared on Broadway in 1954 in The Saint of Bleecker Street.

Her professional operatic debut came on September 8, 1955, when she sang the title role in Bizet's Carmen at the New Orleans Opera. Later that same year she performed the role of Maddalena in Rigoletto in Chicago. On March 28, 1956, she made her New York City Opera debut as the 4th Lady in Walton's Troilus and Cressida, a company with which she continued to perform through 1975. Her Metropolitan Opera debut followed in 1958, when she appeared as the Nurse in Boris Godunov under the baton of Dimitri Mitropoulos.

Dunn built a wide-ranging repertoire across multiple operatic traditions. Her Italian roles included Amneris in Aida, Azucena in Il trovatore, Eboli in Don Carlo, both Laura and La Cieca in La gioconda, the Princess in Adriana Lecouvreur, and Santuzza in Cavalleria rusticana. Her French repertoire encompassed Dalila in Samson et Dalila, Giulietta in The Tales of Hoffmann, Dulcinée in Don Quichotte, and Carmen, a role she performed more than 400 times in four different languages. Her German repertoire included leading mezzo roles in multiple productions of Wagner's Ring cycle, Ortrud in Lohengrin, Kundry in Parsifal, and Venus in Tannhäuser, as well as Klytämnestra in Elektra, Herodias in Salome, and the Nurse in Die Frau ohne Schatten, the latter conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch and directed by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle in 1986. She also performed Czech repertoire, singing Kostelnicka in Jenufa, Jezibaba in Rusalka, and Kabanicha in Katya Kabanova in Czech, along with Marina in Boris Godunov in Russian. Her Spanish repertoire included Goyescas and La vida breve.

Dunn performed at major opera houses across multiple continents. In Europe, her engagements included La Scala in Milan, the Vienna Staatsoper, the Royal Opera at Covent Garden in London, the Paris Opéra, the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, Teatr Wielki in Warsaw, the Hamburg Staatsoper, Deutsche Oper Berlin, the opera companies of Frankfurt and Düsseldorf, and the Verona Arena, where she sang Carmen in 1970 in a production directed by Luca Ronconi. In North America, beyond the Metropolitan Opera and New York City Opera, she performed at the Chicago Lyric Opera, San Francisco Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Opera Company of Boston, Opera Theater of Detroit, New Orleans Opera, and Miami Opera, as well as with the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto and the Opéra de Montréal. Her South and Central American appearances included the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, the Opera Nacional in Chile, Bellas Artes in Mexico City, and the Opera of Puerto Rico.

In addition to her operatic career, Dunn gave recitals throughout Europe and the United States and appeared as a soloist with numerous major symphony orchestras, among them the New York Philharmonic and the orchestras of Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Detroit, Cincinnati, Hamburg, and Vienna. Her concert repertoire drew particularly on the works of Mahler, Ravel, and Verdi. She can be heard on recordings released by EMI, Erato, and Deutsche Grammophon.

Dunn was married to Austrian conductor Kurt Klippstätter from 1972 until his death on January 4, 2000.

Her teaching career spanned several institutions, including the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Illinois, Northwestern University, and Brooklyn College. She joined the voice faculty of the Manhattan School of Music in 1985 and remained there until her retirement in December 2023. In 1974, Rhodes College in Memphis awarded her an honorary degree. In 2011, the Manhattan School of Music presented her with its President's Medal for Distinguished Faculty Service. She received the Sherrill Milnes Voice Award in 2014 for her contributions to teaching and mentoring opera singers. In 2019, she was honored with the VERA Award from the Voice Foundation and the Artist Excellence Award from the Giulio Gari Foundation.