Remembering a mezzo-soprano known for talent and hard work

New England music lovers were lucky because Lorraine Hunt Lieberson's career was based in Boston for nearly 20 years. The art and personality of the late mezzo-soprano moved her colleagues and the public in a very personal way. And since her death on July 3, several people have written in to share their memories.

Pianist Benjamin Pasternack recalled the circumstance of her Boston Symphony Orchestra debut in 1985. She stepped in late to sing the Jungfrau in Schumann's oratorio ``Das Paradies und die Peri."

``I was engaged to accompany the vocal solo rehearsals," Pasternack writes. ``The conductor was the late Giuseppe Sinopli, a nice man. At a certain point in our first run-through, no one sang, and we all looked around. It turned out there was one aria for a different soprano which hadn't been cast -- this just a few days before the first performance. . . . The management hurriedly called around town and arranged a few auditions, which I accompanied onstage. One of the singers was Lorraine. Unlike another I remember who was somewhat controlling and extremely nervous, Lorraine gave off an inner calm, and her singing had a velvety quality. She was easily chosen."

Stephen Lord, music director of Boston Lyric Opera, recalls that when he invited her to take on the title role in ``Carmen," she was uncertain that the part was for her and insisted that she come in to audition for him. ``Needless to say," he writes, ``as soon as she started to sing the Seguidille, I was a goner."

Kathleen Cahill remembers a rehearsal for the Mozart C-Minor Mass with the Dedham Choral Society in 1984.

``Members of the chorus were sitting around near the stage, drinking water and chatting," she writes. ``The orchestra began the Laudamus Te, and the sopranos began their duet. Heads turned. People put things down. Everyone realized that something very special was happening. Her voice was so big, but so tender and beautiful. When the duet was finished, chorus and orchestra alike cheered. Watching Mrs. Hunt Lieberson perform in later years seemed more spiritual and intimate than going to church, at least for me."

My own thoughts have centered on something the late Clark Tippet , a choreographer and dancer for the American Ballet Theatre, once said about his friend, the legendary ballerina Gelsey Kirkland. ``It wasn't just that she was the most talented dancer of her generation," he said. ``She also worked harder than anyone else."

That was certainly true of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. When she started singing in the early '80s, the vocal raw material was there, the musical intelligence, the inner fire. It was wonderful, but it was running wild -- and she was trying to be a soprano.

It took her a decade of trial and error, an infinite patience, a good teacher (Herbert Burtis ), and a lot of hard work to bring it all under control. I remember once attending a meeting at Emmanuel Church when she was vocalizing nearby, painstakingly going over the same arpeggio time after time, like an instrumentalist, until she could consistently place the top note just where she wanted it.

I believe the reason she resented all the publicity about her health in the last few years is that it made it so difficult to do what she did best. The publicity put her into the foreground. Her art was never just about presenting herself; her aim was to disappear into the character, the music, and the words she was delivering.

Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra will reopen the Lynn Veterans Memorial Auditorium in a gala concert Oct. 1. Built in Lynn City Hall in 1943, it seats 2,078 and boasts full stage and pit facilities. Over the last two years it has been renovated.

The Boston Early Music Festival will curate a three-concert early-music series at the new Gilder Lehrman Hall in New York's Morgan Library and Museum next season. According to BEMF executive director Kathleen Fay, two of the programs in Boston's series will be played in New York as well, the Flanders Recorder Quartet and a recital by fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout. The third New York program features soprano Ellen Hargis and lutenist (and BEMF co-artistic director Paul O'Dette).

Yesterday Fay said, ``I approached the library after I read about their new hall, and as it happens, they were already talking about how to resurrect an early-music series they used to present. . . . It is a perfect venue for some of our more intimate attractions. "

Fay says the BEMF has abandoned for now an effort to record the much-admired opera from the last festival, Matheson's ``Boris Godounow," but plans to record a previous BEMF opera instead, Lully's ``Thesee." Much of the original BEMF cast and orchestra, plus five young Boston-based singers, will travel to the studios of Radio Bremen to record it for issue on the CPO label in time for release just before the June 2007 festival. Earlier this year, BEMF's recording of Conradi's ``Ariadne," also made with Radio Bremen and CPO, won a Grammy nomination.