Lorraine Hunt Lieberson

The recipient of awards and critical superlatives in the late 1990s and early 2000s, mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson was identified with the revival of Baroque-era vocal music specifically and with a deep capacity for emotional communication with audiences generally. She appeared often with top early music ensembles. Many who experienced Hunt Lieberson's performances in person came away with an uncanny feeling that she not only made operatic roles her own but also used them in the service of self-revelation, of emotional truth. Her relative obscurity compared with other mezzos of her talent level was partly due to her affinity for the live stage rather than the confines of the recording studio. In 1997 Hunt appeared in a new work, Peter Lieberson's Ashoka's Dream. She married its composer two years later, but faced renewed challenges after being diagnosed with breast cancer. Hunt Lieberson died of the disease on July 3, 2006.