Rosalind Elias

Rosalind Elias (March 13, 1930 – May 3, 2020) was an American mezzo-soprano born in Lowell, Massachusetts, the youngest of thirteen children in a Lebanese-American family. Her parents, Shelaby Namay and Salem Elias, had immigrated from Beirut, and her father worked for a period as a real estate agent. Elias grew up hearing Saturday broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera while doing household chores, and though her father initially opposed her pursuing a performance career, she persuaded him to allow her to take lessons. Her first vocal instruction came from Lillian Sullivan in Lowell, after which she enrolled at the New England Conservatory. Between 1948 and 1952 she sang with the New England Opera, and during her student years she performed the role of Poppaea in L'incoronazione di Poppea and appeared with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. She subsequently traveled to Italy to study at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome under Luigi Ricci and Nazzareno De Angelis, and she also continued her training at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood in Massachusetts.

Elias made her Metropolitan Opera debut on February 23, 1954, as Grimgerde in Wagner's Die Walküre. Over the course of her tenure there she sang 687 performances across 54 roles, among them the title role in Bizet's Carmen, Rosina in The Barber of Seville, Azucena in Il trovatore, Amneris in Aida, Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier, Dorabella in Così fan tutte, Cherubino and Marcellina in The Marriage of Figaro, Suzuki in Madama Butterfly, Olga in Eugene Onegin, Marina in Boris Godunov, Fenena in Nabucco, Charlotte in Werther, Laura in La Gioconda, Bersi in Giordano's Andrea Chénier, Siebel in Faust, Nancy in Martha, and The Witch in Hansel and Gretel. She created the role of Erika in Samuel Barber's Vanessa on January 15, 1958, a credit for which she became particularly well known, and she later created the role of Charmian in Barber's Antony and Cleopatra on September 16, 1966, for the opening of the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center.

Beyond the Metropolitan Opera, Elias performed at major international venues. She sang La Cenerentola with Scottish Opera in 1970, Carmen at the Vienna State Opera in 1972, and Baba the Turk in Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress at the Glyndebourne Festival in 1975. In 1971, her portrayal of Bathsheba in the CBS Television premiere of Ezra Laderman's opera And David Wept, conducted by Alfredo Antonini, earned her critical recognition. She also directed operas in the later part of her career, including a production of Carmen at the San Diego Opera.

Elias made numerous recordings, primarily for RCA Victor during the 1960s. These included Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro under Erich Leinsdorf — a recording that won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Performance, Opera Cast or Choral, at the Second Annual Grammy Awards on November 29, 1959 — as well as Preziosilla in La forza del destino and Laura in La Gioconda, both opposite Zinka Milanov, Giuseppe Di Stefano, and Leonard Warren. She recorded Suzuki in Madama Butterfly twice, first opposite Anna Moffo in 1957 and then opposite Leontyne Price in 1962, and she recorded Azucena in Il trovatore opposite Price, Richard Tucker, and Giorgio Tozzi. Additional recordings included Maddalena in Rigoletto and Meg Page in Falstaff, both conducted by Georg Solti in 1963, and Judith in Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle. She also served as mezzo-soprano soloist in concert works including Berlioz's Roméo et Juliette and the Verdi Requiem.

In 1984, Elias made her New York City Opera debut as Mrs. Lovett in Hal Prince's original staging of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. She later returned to the role of Erika's opera in a different capacity, assuming the part of the Old Baroness in Vanessa, which she performed first at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, then at the Los Angeles Opera in 2004, and at the New York City Opera in 2007.

Her Broadway debut came in 2011, when she played Heidi Schiller in a revival of the James Goldman and Stephen Sondheim musical Follies. The production ran at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts from May 7 to June 19, 2011, before transferring to Broadway for a limited engagement that ran from August 2011 through January 22, 2012.

In her personal life, Elias married Lebanese-American attorney and law professor Zyhayr Moghrabi in 1969, and they remained married until his death in 2015. After being diagnosed with congestive heart failure in 2019, she was admitted to Mount Sinai West on April 30, 2020, following breathing difficulties, and died on May 3, 2020, at the age of 90.