The African American opera singer Shirley Verrett, who has died from heart failure aged 79, overcame both religious opposition and racial discrimination to become one of the most glamorous and admired performers of her generation. Her parents, devout Seventh-day Adventists, disapproved of her aspirations to a stage career, just as audiences and managements in the deep south were to refuse her platforms in the 1950s and 60s.
She nevertheless launched her career in the mid-50s, after an unsure start, but refused to sing to segregated audiences and was courageously outspoken about racial bigotry. In mid-career, in the 1970s, she migrated from mezzo to soprano roles, a move that exacerbated technical problems which were later discovered to be attributable to allergies. At her finest, however, she was a thrilling performer of remarkable beauty and intelligence.
She was born in New Orleans into a large family. Her father was a successful building contractor, and, despite the racial prejudice that prevented him from obtaining a licence to trade, he managed to keep his family in relatively comfortable circumstances. Verrett's parents, unable to countenance the opera stage any more than dancing or cinema-going (though home movies were acceptable), wished her to develop her musical talents by forging a concert career. The family moved to Oxnard, California, where racial prejudice was less overt, as she later recalled, and where she won a local talent competition. Turning down an offer to study with Lotte Lehmann – the great German soprano lived in California in her later years – Verrett took a job instead selling property, until the realisation came: "I had become good at it, but what was I doing? I could not care less about selling houses to people."
In 1951 she married an older man, James Carter, who proved an abusive husband. She left him after finding a gun under his pillow. It was not until her mid-20s that Verrett finally plumped for a singing career, taking lessons first with a local teacher, Anna Fitziu, and moving on to Marian Szekely Freschl at the Juilliard School in New York. She made her operatic debut as the lead in Britten's The Rape of Lucretia at Yellow Springs, Ohio, in 1957. The following year she joined the New York City Opera, singing Irina in Weill's Lost in the Stars (appearing under the name Shirley Carter), and in 1959 made her European debut in Cologne as the Gypsy in Nicolas Nabokov's Rasputin's End.
The racial prejudice black artists routinely suffered in those decades is documented in her memoir, I Never Walked Alone (2003). She tells there, for example, of the occasion when Leopold Stokowski invited her to Houston to sing the role of the Wood Dove in Schoenberg's Gurrelieder. Texas was not yet ready for emancipation, however, and the orchestra board refused to allow her to appear. A mortified Stokowski took her instead to Philadelphia to sing with his rather more prestigious orchestra there in Falla's El Amor Brujo, which they subsequently recorded to great acclaim.
In 1963 she married the artist Lou LoMonaco. Around this time, too, her career took off, with triumphs in the role of Carmen at Spoleto (1962), the Bolshoi (1963), New York City Opera (1964) and La Scala, Milan (1966). But her first performances at New York's Met, as Carmen (1968) and shortly after as Princess Eboli in Verdi's Don Carlos, were less successful and she was not invited back until 1973.
It proved to be an auspicious return. By this time she was gravitating towards soprano roles – she had always had an impressive upper register – and it was as Cassandre in Berlioz's Les Troyens that she was due to sing. The mezzo undertaking the role of Dido, however – Christa Ludwig – was indisposed on the opening night and Verrett took both roles, an extraordinary feat which required her to remain on stage for a good deal of the four hours over which the opera extends. After this, her career at the Met blossomed and she went on to make 126 appearances in all, in both mezzo and soprano roles, notably as Princess Eboli, Azucena in Verdi's Il Trovatore, Néocle in Rossini's Le Siège de Corinthe, as both Adalgisa and Norma (the mezzo and soprano roles respectively in Bellini's opera) and in 1978 as Tosca alongside Pavarotti.
In these years, too, Verrett was a popular figure at Covent Garden and on the recital platform, as she was in the 1980s in Paris, where she lived with her family for three years. The magnificence of her Azucena and Amneris (in Verdi's Aida) was recognised, as was her exceptional agility in bel canto repertoire. For a mezzo manqué she had a remarkable facility in the stratosphere: Norma's top E flats were delivered flawlessly, while the "knife-like glitter of her keen-edged tone" as Verdi's Lady Macbeth was praised. Her success in the latter role at La Scala in 1975 led to a benchmark recording under Claudio Abbado (Deutsche Grammophon, 1976).
Nowhere was she received with more adulation than in Italy, where she was known as La Nera Callas (the Black Callas). Other notable appearances on the major international stages at the height of her career in the 1970s and 80s included those in such soprano roles as Aida, Leonore in Fidelio, Medée (Cherubini), Judith in Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle and Desdemona in Verdi's Otello. She sang Dido in the opening production at the Bastille Opéra, Paris, in 1990.
The breadth of her vocal range came at a price, however. Underpowered in the middle register, her voice could also acquire a strident edge when pushed higher up, while the lower notes could be forced and unsteady in pitch. Verrett herself acknowledged that her singing was inconsistent, but only late in her career did she discover that she suffered from an allergy to mould spores which clogged her bronchial tubes. For some, her singing was over-emphatic and characterised by reckless abandon, but to others this visceral quality was its strength. At her best, Verrett could produce tone that was both silky and sumptuous; her majestic ascent to climactic high notes was truly spine-tingling. Her stage presence too, exuding regal authority, was electrifying.
At the end of her career she turned, with mixed success, to Broadway, taking the role of Nettie Fowler in Carousel (1994). Her voice was featured in the Academy Award-winning film Life Is Beautiful (1997) and she also appeared in the film Maggio Musicale (1989), which starred Malcolm McDowell.
Her husband survives her, along with her adopted daughter, Francesca, and a granddaughter.