Shirley Verrett

SHIRLEY VERRETT was an operatic mezzo-soprano and soprano who won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in 1961 and performed at the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, and other major opera houses from the late 1960s through the 1990s. She is the author of I Never Walked Alone: The Autobiography of an American Singer, co-written with Christopher Brooks.

Verrett made history on October 22, 1973, singing both Cassandra and Dido in Berlioz’s Les Troyens at the Met in a single evening. In 1996 she joined the faculty of the University of Michigan School of Music as Professor of Voice.

Verrett was born in New Orleans, raised in Los Angeles, and studied at the Juilliard School. She died of heart failure on November 5, 2010, in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Shirley Verrett’s books are published by Trade Paper Press, an imprint of Turner Publishing.

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