Nadine Conner

Pure-toned lyric soprano

Evelyn Nadine Henderson (Nadine Conner), opera singer: born Los Angeles 20 February 1913; twice married (one son, one daughter); died Los Alamitos, California 1 March 2003.

The American lyric soprano Nadine Conner sang for 18 consecutive seasons at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, and appeared at other opera houses in the United States. Endowed with a pure-toned, silvery voice as well as a facility for coloratura, she did not have a large repertory, but the roles that she did sing, ranging from Mozart and Rossini to Puccini and Strauss, were always musically and stylistically of a very high standard.

Born in Los Angeles in 1913, she studied with Horatio Cogswell and Amado Fernandez at the University of Southern California. She sang for various radio stations and in 1940 made her opera début in Los Angeles with the California Opera Company as Marguerite in Gounod's Faust. Conner studied further with the British soprano Florence Eastwood in New York, and on 22 December 1941 made her Metropolitan début as Pamina in Die Zauberflöte.

Conner's other Mozart roles were Zerlina in Don Giovanni and Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro, of which the latter was probably the most successful. Over the next 18 seasons, her roles included Rosina (in the soprano version) in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Micaela in Carmen, Gretel in Hansel and Gretel, Marzelline in Fidelio and Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier, all of them well suited to her voice and personality.

In 1945 Conner made her début in San Francisco as Musetta in La Bohème – at the Met she always sang Mimi in Puccini's opera – followed by Sophie in a performance of Der Rosenkavalier in which the Marschallin was sung by the great Lotte Lehmann. During four seasons in San Francisco, Conner appeared in her usual repertory. Singing Violetta at a matinée in 1947, she fainted in the last scene, carrying realism slightly too far.

Several of Conner's performances at the Met were captured on disc, including Susanna, Marzelline, Gretel, Micaela and Sophie, but her finest recording is the soprano solo in Brahms's German Requiem, conducted by Bruno Walter and issued in 1952. Recordings were also made of duets by Conner with the Danish tenor Lauritz Melchior, taken from the films Luxury Liner (1947) and The Stars are Singing (1952) in which they appeared.

Her last appearance with the Met was in 1960 in Faust.

Elizabeth Forbes