Maria Ewing, the opera singer who was noted for intense performances and became the wife of director Sir Peter Hall and the mother of actress Rebecca Hall, has died at the age of 71.
Soprano and mezzo-soprano Ewing died on Sunday at her home in the US city of Detroit, her spokeswoman Bryna Rifkin said.
Born in Detroit to a Dutch mother and an African American father, Ewing was the youngest of four daughters.
“She was an extraordinarily gifted artist who by the sheer force of her talent and will catapulted herself to the most rarefied heights of the international opera world,” her family said in a statement.
Ewing made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1976 in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) and starred as Blanche de la Force in a new John Dexter production of Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmelites in 1977.
She sang 96 Met performances until her finale as Marie in Berg’s Wozzeck in 1997, a span that included a six-year interruption triggered by a spat with Met artistic director James Levine.
Ewing met Sir Peter Hall in 1978 when she sang Dorabella in a staging of Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte at Glyndebourne Festival, directed by Sir Peter and led by conductor Bernard Haitink.
Ewing married Sir Peter, a founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company and then director of the National Theatre, in 1982.
Four years later, her husband directed her at the Met where she sang the title role in a new staging of Bizert’s Carmen.
“Far from the usual attempt at a fiery sexpot, her Carmen was easily bored, even sullen, her come-hither being a challenge to men to awaken her interest,” Associated Press critic Mary Campbell wrote.
But Ewing severed ties with the Met after the company scrapped a contemplated telecast of Carmen with her, then broadcast a 1987 performance of the production starring Agnes Baltsa.
Ewing responded by withdrawing from appearances at the Ravinia Festival outside Chicago, where Levine was music director.
“The Met has no manners,” Ewing and Sir Peter told the Chicago Tribune.
Sir Peter directed Ewing in 1986 in the title role of Strauss’ Salome at the LA Opera, in which she stripped to fully nude at the end of the Dance of the Seven Veils.
The staging travelled in 1988 to London’s Royal Opera and the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and a telecast of the production was released commercially on DVD.
“Maria Ewing, who ventured the title role in Richard Strauss’ Salome for the new Music Centre Opera on Thursday night, is a Theatreviech,” Martin Bernheimer wrote in the Los Angeles Times, using a German word for “theatre beast”.
“She is, in fact, a prime and wondrous example of the rare breed. She is a lovely, frail, seemingly nervous young woman blessed with a devastating pout, hypnotic eyes and a searing mind.
“She also happens to command a rather soft, slender and reedy mezzo-soprano that thins out a bit at the extended top.”
Sir Peter also directed Ewing in Nozze in Chicago in 1987.
They divorced in 1990 and Sir Peter died in 2017 at the age of 87.
Their daughter Rebecca Hall, born in 1982, has starred in films including Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon and horror movie The Awakening. She also starred in last year’s blockbuster monster movie Godzilla Vs Kong.
Her directing debut, Passing, was released last year.
Ewing is also survived by her sisters Norma Koleta, Carol Pancratz and Francis Ewing.
