Great Barrington — At the end of a dirt road, near a turn in the Alford Brook, sits a colonial farmhouse surrounded by forest and flowers and singing birds, a place where acclaimed American soprano and master vocal teacher Phyllis Curtin lived and loved and, this last Sunday (June 4), died, surrounded by family, at age 94.
Curtin was renowned for the dozens of new works created for her, for her time as a prominent anchor in the New York City Opera in the 1950s and ‘60s, and for her teaching career, which despite nearly 50 years of rheumatoid arthritis, she continued until she was 92.
While she sang the classical operatic repertoire and achieved acclaim for her Mozart heroines, she also “premiered major American pieces,” sung in English, like composer Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah, “the most performed American opera in the world,” said her daughter, Claudia d’Alessandro, owner of The Music Store in Great Barrington. “She was a champion of American music.”
According to the New York Times she also sang at the Metropolitan Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Vienna State Opera, Covent Garden and La Scala, among others.
“She had reams of music written for her,” said longtime friend and former student Margaret Everett, former director of the Philadelphia Opera who trained with Curtin. “She was a huge force in all of our lives, and for 20th Century music.”
Yet for Curtin it wasn’t about a superdiva hitting megastardom. “For her it was all about developing, enjoying and producing the music and the art form,” d’Alessandro said. “It was about the essence of the thing, not the fame.”
She had integrity. “Somewhere in Europe,” d’Alessandro said, “she once refused to sing because there was a big swastika [at the theatre].” Curtin wouldn’t sing in South Africa during apartheid despite the appearance being “one of her best contracts ever, the most she would have ever been paid,” said Gena Frank, her granddaughter, who added that her grandmother, an “FDR Democrat,” was “less well known for her passion for social justice and equality.” Frank said Curtin would take her, at a very young age, to Great Barrington town meetings to show her the importance of political involvement. Frank, who is now legislative aide to Rep. William “Smitty” Pignatelli (D-Lenox), moved with her mother and two brothers to Curtin’s house when she was 6, and said when her grandmother could no longer drive, she drove her to Tanglewood to teach.
Phyllis and Claudia go over Phyllis’ appointment schedule and travel plans. Photo: Scott Barrow
Curtin led one of the “most popular vocal master classes” at Tanglewood for 51 years, said Boston Symphony Orchestra Managing Director Mark Volpe. “Phyllis’s extraordinary artistry and deeply effective role as a master teacher at Tanglewood, all informed by her dynamic presence, dignity, and elegance as a human being.” Curtin’s teaching and participation “in two of the festival’s most iconic American premiere performances — Britten’s Peter Grimes in 1946 and his War Requiem in 1963,” gives Curtin, “a place of honor in Tanglewood’s pantheon of great major musical figures who have had an undeniable impact on the festival and its school.”
At a Tanglewood birthday celebration she once said, “why are they making this big fuss,” d’Alessandro said. “Fame was a rather surprising byproduct of what she was doing and what she was doing was loving her life in music.”
And she had a fortitude that was, perhaps, ignited by this love. “The National Arthritis Association honored her because she never lost a day — not one day,” d’Alessandro said, despite the lack of medication during most of the years she suffered from the autoimmune disease. “She was still walking until 5 years ago, and teaching until two years ago. She never canceled an engagement for that.”
“I will always remember her hands,” wrote renowned mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe, a former student. “How her swollen knuckles and bent fingers cut through the air as she would teach…her hands touching our foreheads and then sending them out as she painted a legato line moving out in front of us, drawing our eyes and intention always forward.”
Curtin’s mother was a church organist and choir director in Clarksburg, West Virginia, where Curtin was born Phyllis Jane Smith on Dec. 3, 1921. She studied ballet and violin, later studied voice at Wellesley, where she graduated in 1943 with a degree in political science. She herself was a student at Tanglewood in 1946.
Phyllis Curtin at her home in Great Barrington that she and her husband Eugene Cook purchased in 1964. Photo: Eugene Cook
Her marriage to her first husband, Philip D. Curtin, ended in divorce. Later she married Eugene Cook, a photojournalist who was the arts and entertainment editor at Life Magazine, a marriage that “made her career,” d’Alessandro says of her parents. “He assigned himself her New York City Opera debut story. He had seen the press and pictures and took one look at her and said, ‘I think I’ll write it.’ ”
Curtin also taught at Yale and Boston University. Her students everywhere say she was an inspired teacher. d’Alessandro said one student had coined her mother’s technique as the “true light school of singing” because “it wasn’t based on contortions or making things happen; it was healthy, and it made it possible to have a very long and easy vocal career.”
d’Alessandro said there was another technique for which Curtin was beloved: “ ‘Put the thought ahead of the tone,’ she would say. If you wanted your voice to carry out there and you thought it out there, it would end up out there.”
The New York Times said Curtin was “noted for the purity of her voice, the sensitivity of her musical phrasing and the crystalline perfection of her diction.”
Curtin and Cook lived in New York City, and bought their summer home in Great Barrington in 1964 after previously renting in Stockbridge. Cook was a professor of photojournalism at BU and taught Italian to opera singers, since he was raised by Italian parents. Cook died in 1986, and Curtin moved here permanently in 1997. Her rheumatoid arthritis prompted her to add a small modern one level home to the original farmhouse.
And sitting at her mother’s sunlit table, d’Alesssandro spoke about Curtin as the mother, the person. “She was kind, loving, and –– ” she laughs “–– infinitely forgiving, inspiring; she modeled grace and a joy of living, and never ever complained about pain or anything having to do with herself.”
d’Alessandro’s partner David Reed said she “had a voracious appetite for reading,” and loved to work New York Times Crossword Puzzles. He points to the last crossword book Curtin had recently finished. He said she had “stacks” of completed puzzle books. “She was sharp,” he said. “She was better at it than I was.”
Phyllis in David Reed’s Miata convertible. Photo: Claudia d’Alessandro
Reed said she enjoyed riding shotgun in his Miata convertible. “She loved her flowers, her dogs, animals, gardening, visiting with friends, especially if there was chocolate,” he added. There were chocolates all over the place. “Chocolate was her calling card,” d’Alessandro said. “Everybody who came brought chocolate.”
In recent years, when she couldn’t take the walks she loved and “was stuck in a chair,” Frank said, she found a joy in simple things. “She had a deep love of the natural world, and would follow the progress of the seasons,” and marveling at things like the color of leaves and the texture of tree bark, Frank added.
Curtin “adopted people,” making for a best-of-both-worlds life for d’Alessandro, an only child who still recalls being met by “flashbulbs” after trans-Atlantic flights, and got her first passport when she was two. Everett, who was one of those adoptees, says Curtin “brought people together because she was so beloved around the world. She had an elegant journey through life.”
She was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to serve on the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 1976 President Gerald Ford invited her to sing at a White House dinner honoring West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. She also served on the National Council for the Arts, and was designated a U.S. Ambassador for the Arts.
Curtin’s caretaker Jim Soules stopped in and wept as he described Curtin as “very inspirational.” He said he “loved” to see her in the morning, and marveled at how she never complained. “I’ve got some arthritis, but nothing like Ms. Phyllis,” he said. “Putting a smile on her face brought me tremendous happiness.”
She was generous. “Not a day went by when she didn’t say how fortunate she felt to be living here with us, and of the green gold of the trees, the birds,” d’Alessandro said.
“You made us all feel like glorious flowers in your beautiful garden,” Blythe wrote of her time as Curtin’s student.
Curtin leaves her daughter, Claudia d’Alessandro, grandchildren Gena Frank of Boston, Mass., and grandsons Will and Sam Frank of New York, N.Y., and Newton, Mass., respectively. Letters of sympathy and remembrance can be addressed to Claudia d’Alessandro at 9 Seekonk Road, Great Barrington, MA 01230. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the Tanglewood Music Center, c/o Tanglewood Development Office, 301 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston, MA 02115 (or online at www.tanglewood.org/contribute) in her name.
A Celebration of Life Memorial will be announced at a later date.
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