Yesterday’s report of the death of soprano and mezzo Maria Ewing at the age of 71 revived several fond memories. When in 1981 I decided to make the move from General Research Corporation in Santa Barbara to the Schlumberger-Doll Research facility in Ridgefield, Connecticut, I almost immediately made two “secondary” decisions. One was to find a place to live in Stamford, which would greatly facilitate my getting into New York City without relying on a car. The second involved calling the Metropolitan Opera and taking out a subscription to a series that deliberately excluded nineteenth-century Italian opera.
After meeting my wife-to-be, my first subscription renewal involved pairs, rather than singles; and my wife and I have been attending operas together ever since. One of our most memorable evenings at the Met was a production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 588 opera buffa Così fan tutte in which Ewing sang the role of Dorabella. The account of Ewing in The New York Times had referred to her as “dopey Dorabella,” leaving me unsure of what to expect. Fortunately, what I experienced as a performance in which Ewing delivered buffa to the max. The high jinks were so abundant and so imaginative that, to this day, I can barely recall anything else about that particular production.
My guess is that her capacity to rule the stage through acting, as well as singing, had much to do with her having performed Così at Glyndebourne in 1978. That production was directed by Peter Hall, whom she would subsequently marry in 1982. After our first encounter with Ewing in that same opera, my wife and I tried to keep up with her other Met appearances; but her “dopey Dorabella” will remain my fondest memory of her performances.
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