Teresa Stratas

Teresa Stratas, born Anastasia Stratakis on May 26, 1938, in Oshawa, near Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is a retired Canadian operatic soprano and actress of Greek descent. She trained at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto under Irene Jessner and made her professional opera debut at age 20 as Mimì in La bohème at the Toronto Opera Festival. In 1959, she co-won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and debuted with the company that same year as Poussette in Manon.

Her early international career advanced rapidly. In 1961, she created the title role in Peggy Glanville-Hicks' Nausicaa at the Herod Atticus Theatre in Athens and made her Covent Garden debut as Mimì. Her La Scala debut followed in 1962 as Isabella in Manuel de Falla's Atlántida. Over the following decades, Stratas performed at major opera houses worldwide, including the Bolshoi, Vienna State Opera, the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the Paris Opera, the Berlin Opera, the San Francisco Opera, and at the Salzburg Festival.

Her repertoire encompassed a wide range of roles, among them Zerlina in Don Giovanni, Despina in Così fan tutte, Cherubino and Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro, Liù in Turandot, Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly, Micaëla in Carmen, Marguerite in Faust, the title role in La Périchole, Gretel in Hansel and Gretel, Mélisande in Pelléas et Mélisande, Desdemona in Otello, and the title roles of Salome and Lulu. She created the role of Sardulla in the American premiere of Menotti's The Last Savage at the Metropolitan Opera in 1964. In 1974, she starred in a film of Strauss's Salome directed by Götz Friedrich, with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Karl Böhm. Pierre Boulez selected her to sing the title role in the world premiere of Friedrich Cerha's completed version of Alban Berg's Lulu in Paris in 1979. While preparing for a production of Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny that same year, she met Lotte Lenya, the originator of the role of Jenny Smith and widow of Kurt Weill. Lenya gave Stratas scores of previously unpublished Weill songs, some of which Stratas subsequently recorded on the albums The Unknown Kurt Weill and Stratas Sings Weill.

At the Metropolitan Opera, Stratas accumulated 385 performances of 41 different roles over a thirty-six-year career. Her most frequently performed roles at the house were Liù in Turandot and Nedda in Pagliacci, each with 27 performances, and Mimì in La bohème with 26 performances. Among her notable evenings at the Met, on September 26, 1989, she sang all three soprano roles in Puccini's Trittico — Giorgetta in Il tabarro, Angelica in Suor Angelica, and Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi. She created the role of Marie Antoinette in the world premiere of John Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles at the Met in 1991. At the opening of the Met's 1994 season, she appeared as Nedda in Pagliacci opposite Luciano Pavarotti and as Giorgetta in Il tabarro opposite Plácido Domingo. Her final performance with the company came on December 9, 1995, as Jenny in Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny.

In March 1962, Stratas appeared as a contestant on the CBS game show To Tell the Truth, where panelists including Dorothy Kilgallen, Johnny Carson, Tom Poston, and Dina Merrill failed to identify her as the real Teresa Stratas, resulting in all three contestants sharing the top prize of $1,000 and each receiving a carton of Salem cigarettes.

In 1986, Stratas made her Broadway debut in Rags, for which she received the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical in 1987. She was also nominated for the Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical for the same role that year.

Her recording work brought additional recognition. She won the Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording and Grammy Award for Best Classical Album for Alban Berg's Lulu in 1981, and a Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording for Verdi's La traviata in 1984. In 1988, she recorded the role of Julie La Verne in EMI's complete recording of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II's Show Boat, conducted by John McGlinn, alongside Frederica von Stade, Jerry Hadley, and Bruce Hubbard. The recording used Robert Russell Bennett's original 1927 orchestrations, Will Vodery's vocal arrangements, and Hammerstein's complete lyrics, and was the first complete recording of the score.

Among her other honors, Stratas was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1972 and received the Governor General's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement in 2000. She was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame in 2001 and holds honorary degrees from McMaster University, the University of Toronto, the Eastman School of Music, and York University. In the 1980s, she traveled to Calcutta to work with Mother Teresa in an orphanage and at the Kalighat Home for the Dying, and in the 1990s she spent time in a Romanian hospital caring for sick and dying orphans. On September 25, 2008, she made her first public appearance in over a decade, giving an interview with the Metropolitan Opera Guild. Stratas lives in Florida.