Nan Merriman

Katherine Ann Merriman, known professionally as Nan Merriman, was born on April 28, 1920, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and died on July 22, 2012, in Los Angeles, at the age of 92. An American operatic mezzo-soprano, she built a career spanning opera, radio, recording, and Broadway.

Merriman began performing alongside her brother, pianist J. Vick O'Brien, who later became president of the Pittsburgh National Bank and was the father of Thomas H. O'Brien, retired president of PNC. The siblings performed together in cafes and supper clubs in the Pittsburgh area. She subsequently studied voice with retired lyric soprano Alexis Bassian in San Francisco and with Lotte Lehmann in Los Angeles. By the time she was twenty, she had begun contributing to Hollywood film soundtracks, and her voice appeared in two Jeanette MacDonald films: in a choral capacity in Maytime in 1937, and in a brief solo in Smilin' Through in 1941.

It was her work in Hollywood that brought her to the attention of Laurence Olivier, who selected Merriman to join him and his wife, actress Vivien Leigh, on their 1940 Broadway tour of Romeo and Juliet. During the production, she performed songs between set changes. This engagement constitutes her Broadway credit.

From 1944 to 1953, Merriman sang extensively under conductor Arturo Toscanini during his tenure with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, performing both in live concerts and on radio broadcasts. The roles she sang under his direction included Maddalena in Act IV of Verdi's Rigoletto, Emilia in Verdi's Otello, Mistress Page in Verdi's Falstaff, and the trouser role of Orfeo in Act II of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice. She also participated in Toscanini's sole studio recording of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with the NBC Symphony Orchestra in 1952. In 1956, she appeared as Dorabella in a La Scala performance of Mozart's Così fan tutte conducted by Guido Cantelli, and she reprised the same role at San Francisco Opera in 1957.

Merriman recorded Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde on three separate occasions. Two of these recordings featured tenor Ernst Haefliger and the Concertgebouw Orchestra: the first, from 1957, was conducted by Eduard van Beinum for the Philips label, and the second, from 1963, was conducted by Eugen Jochum for Deutsche Grammophon. The 1963 recording received the Grand Prix du Disque from the Académie Charles Cros. A third recording, made live in Hamburg in April 1965 with tenor Fritz Wunderlich and the NDR Symphony Orchestra under Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt, was subsequently released on multiple labels.

Merriman developed a particularly strong following in the Netherlands, where she met and married Dutch tenor Tom Brand, a widower with several children. She retired from performing in 1965 to care for the family. Brand died in 1970. After her children were grown, Merriman maintained residences in both Hawaii and California, and she died of natural causes at her Los Angeles home.