Maria Ewing, a soprano and mezzo-soprano known for intense performances, became the wife of director Sir Peter Hall And actor-director Rebecca Hall’s mother has died at the age of 71.
Ewing died on Sunday at his home Detroit, spokeswoman Brianna Rifkin said on Monday.
Born in Detroit to a Dutch mother and an African American fatherEwing was the youngest of four daughters.
“She was an extraordinarily talented performer who propelled herself to the rarest heights of international opera in the world,” her family said in a statement.
Ewing made him a metropolis Opera Debuted in 1976 in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) and in 1977 starred as Blanche de la Force in a new John Dexter production of Poulanx Dialogues des Carmelites. She sang 96 Met performances until her finale as Mary in Berg’s Wozek. 1997, a period that included a six-year interruption due to a dispute with the Met artistic director James Levine.
Ewing met Hall in 1978, when he sang Dorabella in a staged performance of Mozart’s Coso fan tute at Britain’s Glyndebourne festival, directed by Hall and led by conductor Bernard Hattink. Ewing married Hall, founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company and director of Britain’s National Theatre, in 1982.
Four years later, her husband directed her at the Met where she played the title role in a new staging of Bizzart’s Carmen.
Associated Press reviewer Mary Campbell wrote, “Far from the usual effort at a fiery sexpot, her Carmen was easily bored, even depressed, her commute was a challenge to men.”
But Ewing broke up with the Met when the company canceled a well-intentioned telecast of Carmen with him, then aired a 1987 performance of the production starring Agnes Baltsa. Ewing responded by withdrawing from attending the Ravinia festival outside Chicago, where Levine was the music director.
“The weather has no etiquette,” Ewing and Hall told the Chicago Tribune.
Hall directed Ewing in the title role of Strauss’s Salome at LA Opera in 1986, in which she took off her clothes completely naked at the end of the Dance of the Seven Veils. The staging moved to the Royal Opera in London and the Lyric Opera in Chicago in 1988, and a broadcast of the production was released commercially on DVD.
“Maria Ewing, who played the title role in Richard Strauss’s Salome for the new Music Center opera on Thursday night, is a theatrewich,” Martin Bernheimer wrote in the Los Angeles Times, using a German word for “theater beast.” “Indeed, he is a prime and wondrous example of a rare breed. She is a sweet, vulnerable, nervous young woman blessed with a destructive pout, hypnotic eyes and a pitiful mind. She also commands a soft, slender and ready mezzo-soprano that tapers a bit at the elongated top.
Hall also directed Ewing in Knows in Chicago in 1987.
They divorced in 1990 and Hall died in 2017 at the age of 87.
Born in 1982, Rebecca Hall has starred in films such as Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon and The Awakening. His directorial debut, Passing, was released last year.
Ewing is also survived by sisters Norma Coletta, Carol Pankratz and Francis Ewing.