Photo Journal:
Remembering Lorraine

By Matthew Westphal
September 3, 2006

It was two months ago today she left us. And we still miss her.

Some of us always will.




At left and below, we remember in photos the career and artistry of the late mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson.

At left, from top:
- La Divina herself
      (artist photo by Anne-Marie Le Blé)
- the performance that made her
   "the Maria Callas of Baroque opera" :
   in the title role of Charpentier's Médée
   in a 1993-94 production
   with Les Arts Florissants
      (photo: Erato/Warner Classics)











- her most controversial project:
   a staging by Peter Sellars
   of Bach's cantatas
   Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut
      (above)
   and Ich habe genug (below)
      (seen here at Lincoln Center
       in 2001, photos by
       Steve J. Sherman).























LHL singing Handel in two
   very different stagings:
- in the title role in Stephen Wadsworth's
   English-language staging of
   Xerxes (Serse)
   (seen here at New York City Opera
      in 1997)
- as Irene in Peter Sellars's 1996
   staging of the oratorio Theodora
   for Glyndebourne.
      (photo courtesy of Avie Classics)















- singing Neruda Songs,
   composed for her by her husband,
   Peter Lieberson,
   with James Levine and the
   Boston Symphony Orchestra
   in November 2005.
      (photo by Michael Lutch)

Below, from top:

- Left: as Donna Elvira in Peter Sellars's 1987 production of
   Mozart's Don Giovanni, set in an East Harlem drug den
      (still from the DVD on Universal Classics)
- Right: in the title role of Handel's Ariodante
      (photo courtesy of the Internationale Händel-Festspiele Göttingen)
- as Didon (with Elena Zaremba as Anna) in Berlioz's Les Troyens
   at the Metropolitan Opera in 2003 (photo by Marty Sohl)
- in Peter Sellars's staging of Bach's cantata
   Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut at Lincoln Center in 2001.