Evelyn Lear, an American soprano who became a star in Europe in 1950 and later won success in the U.S. to sing some of the most difficult roles in contemporary opera, died Sunday at Sandy Spring, Maryland, for 86 years.
His son, Jan Stewart, has confirmed the death.
Ms. Lear, who sang over 90 performances with the Metropolitan Opera in 1960 and later was praised by both sides of the Atlantic for his musical voice warm, expressive and dramatic stage presence.
As recitalist, was also known for his versatility, singing works by composers from Mozart to Schoenberg to Sondheim.
He was best known as an interpreter of Berg. By mid-century Europe, Miss Lear was considered one of the leading interpreters of Berg's Lulu, the convicted murderer of prostitutes in the center of his 1937 opera of the same name.
At the Met, Miss Marie Lear sing atonal opera "Wozzeck" Berg about infidelity and murder.
Review your Marie there in 1969, Harold C. Schonberg wrote in The New York Times that Mrs. Lear was "intelligent, capable of producing floods of well focused tone, remarkably intense." He added, however, that their physical attractiveness has worked against it, making relationship with Marie "this vulture of Wozzeck" implausible.
Evelyn Shulman was born in Brooklyn on January 8, 1926. His maternal grandfather, Savel Kwartin, was a featured singer in Europe and the United States. His mother, Nina Kwartin Shulman, was an opera singer and performer, largely abandoned her career for marriage and motherhood.
Evelyn Young had decided to be a singer when she was 3 years, but was attacked by studying piano and French horn. After an early marriage to Walter Lear, a doctor, ended in divorce, she decided to pursue a real vocal training and enrolled at the Juilliard School.
In 1955 he married a classmate, the baritone Thomas Stewart, who would have appeared frequently in recitals and recordings.
Like many homegrown singers of her time, Ms. Lear and Mr. Stewart worked under the weight of being American. American opera houses of the period showed a preference for the Old World, with first class American singers often transmitted in favor of second-class Europeans.
Mr. Stewart was about to give up music for a job at IBM, where he and Ms. Lear received Fulbright scholarships to study in Germany. He moved to Europe, where they made their reputation.
In 1958, Miss Lear has a lot of warning to sing songs of Richard Strauss' Four Last, "with the London Philharmonic conducted by Sir Adrian Boult. He had learned the score in just four days.
His talent for quick study in his well-served two years later, when the Vienna Festival has requested that you take the role of Lulu - a role that had never sung - in the short term. The work consists of the 12-tone style or "standard" eminently unhummable a technique that uses all 12 notes of the Western musical scale strictly twice.
"Why should this be so difficult condemnadament?" Ms. Lear recalled having thought that he was learning the role. But she has learned in a few weeks, and their performance, with Karl Böhm, has internationalism.
Ms. Lear made its debut at the Met in 1967, with Zubin Mehta, as Lavinia (the Electra counterpart) in the world premiere of "Mourning Becomes Electra." The work of Marvin David Levy, is an adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's work, was a reworking of the Greek myth of Orestes.
In late 1960, suffering from the wear of the voice, Miss Lear lost his voice temporarily. He reorganized his repertoire, switching his attention to Mozart and Italian opera, and his career has been renewed. She sang with the Met until his retirement in 1985.
His other Met roles include Octavian in Richard Strauss's "Knight of the Rose" and his composer in "Ariadne auf Naxos", Cherubino in Mozart's "nozze di Figaro" and Donna Elvira in "Don Giovanni", Alice Ford in Verdi "Falstaff", and in subsequent years, the Countess Geschwitz in "Lulu".
Stewart died in 2006. Ms. Lear, who lived in Rockville, Md., is survived by his son, Jan, a daughter, Bonni Stewart, and two grandchildren.
With her husband, she founded the Evelyn Lear and Thomas Stewart Emerging Singers Program, under the auspices of the Wagner Society of Washington DC
If Ms. Lear was best known for appearing in the work of murder, incest and such things, then his reputation, he explained, not inconvenienced her.
"I like Handel, Mozart and Strauss, and I like my heroines too modern neurotic," he told The New York Times in 1967. "I've never been afraid to make a bad sound on stage, because it is real and reality is never ugly."
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