Many teachers of vocal performance emphasize sound production, diction, and other aspects of singing technique. The soprano Phyllis Curtin, whose distinguished international career in the opera house and in the concert hall was capped by several decades as a renowned and inspiring teacher, often had other things at the top of her mind.
“She had the deepest understanding of why we actually make music, how we think about poetry, why we are standing in the crook of the piano,” said the baritone Sanford Sylvan, who first met Ms. Curtin in 1974 at Tanglewood, where she taught a legendary vocal seminar over the course of 51 summers.
Ms. Curtin died at her home in Great Barrington Sunday. She was 94.
“Her profound spirit of creativity and generosity, along with her legacy of artistic gifts on stage and off, will serve as an inspiration for students and music lovers for generations to come,” Mark Volpe, Boston Symphony Orchestra managing director, said in a statement.
In her prime, Ms. Curtin was a glamorous singer of protean artistic gifts, seemingly capable of shaping her radiant silvery voice in the image of any art song’s expressive core. On the opera stage she was known for her communicative mastery, and was hailed for her performances as Fiordiligi in Mozart’s “Così fan Tutte,” Violetta in “La Traviata,” and the title role of Strauss’s “Salome,” among many others.
Ms. Curtin’s deeply expressive musicianship and the integrity of her creative approach made her a sought-after collaborator with many composers of her day. She sang in the North American premiere of Benjamin Britten’s “War Requiem” at Tanglewood, collaborated closely in recital with composers ranging from Aaron Copland to Lukas Foss to Ned Rorem, and created the title role in Carlisle Floyd’s opera “Susannah.”
Speaking Tuesday from his home in Tallahassee, Floyd, now 89, said Ms. Curtin was “a very wonderful, impeccable artist – would that all of our singers and performers had her kind of humility and delight in the profession.”
But it is no doubt through her teaching — at Yale University (1974-1983), Boston University (where she served as dean of the College of Fine Arts from 1983-1991), and Tanglewood — that Ms. Curtin made her most lasting impact. While the image of the opera diva often conjures associations with vocal preening and self-aggrandizement on and off the stage, Ms. Curtin was known for demanding that her young students think less about themselves and their career ambitions and that they concentrate more on discovering the composer’s true intentions, as well as the intentions of a song’s poetic text.
“Phyllis Curtin probably did more to encourage the creation of art, in singers and in young composers, than anyone in her century,” Sharon Daniels, who formerly directed the BU Opera Institute, said by phone this week. Ms. Curtin founded the institute.
Among Ms. Curtin’s long list of students are many singers who went on to high-profile and critically acclaimed careers. In addition to Sylvan those students include Dawn Upshaw, Stephanie Blythe, Cheryl Studer, Dominique Labelle, and Simon Estes. Several of these singers are now also themselves teachers and many credit Ms. Curtin with modeling the path to doing so.
“In my DNA is something from Phyllis about the integrity of teaching,” Sylvan recalled. “The integrity of a life: Phyllis brought her life, and taught us how to live a life.”
“Her presence is within all of these people she’s had such an impact on,” said Upshaw, who first studied with Ms. Curtin at Tanglewood at the age of 23 and now directs the Tanglewood Music Center’s Vocal Arts Program. “At the time, I don’t think I had met a stronger woman in the music world, and I was very inspired by that strength and that conviction.”
Ms. Curtin brought a sense of mission to her teaching and scoffed at any notion that pedagogy should be assigned a place of secondary importance in an artist’s life. She told the Globe in 1971 that “teaching should be the culmination of a career, not just a thing you do when you can’t do anything else.” She also emphasized how important it was to help students develop their vocal instruments in the face of professional pressures to leap quickly into the business of performing. “A conductor hears a Stradivarius voice and he wants to use it,” she said. “It may not matter whether the singer has any taste, whether he knows the difference between Mozart and Puccini. … His youthful, natural talent will probably carry him along for a few years, but then he’ll probably disappear. And that’s tragic.”
Ms. Curtin was born as Phyllis Smith in 1921 in Clarksburg, W.Va., and studied violin seriously as child. At Wellesley College she majored in political science and studied voice with Olga Averino and later studied with Boris Goldovsky at New England Conservatory. In 1946, she came as a student to Tanglewood, where Goldovsky had established a new opera program. Her very first operatic role was one of the nieces in the American premiere of Britten’s “Peter Grimes,” which took place that summer.
Her performance career began in earnest in the 1950s and her opera work eventually took her to La Scala, the Metropolitan Opera, the Glyndebourne Festival, and beyond. But it was one of her many appearances at New York City Opera that proved most fateful. Eugene Cook, an editor and photographer at Life Magazine, was in attendance and later photographed her for the magazine. They married in 1956. He died in 1986.
“Her love for Eugene was just overwhelming, and it was a thrill as a young person to see mature people later in life be so deeply in love,” recalled Sylvan. “It was something to which we could all aspire.”
Ms. Curtin’s first marriage to Philip Curtin ended in divorce. She leaves a daughter, Claudia d’Alessandro of Great Barrington, and three grandchildren. A memorial celebration of her life will be announced later in the summer.
Jeremy Eichler can be reached at jeichler@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @Jeremy_Eichler.
Correction: Because of a reporting error, this obituary incorrectly identified Sharon Daniels as the director of Boston University’s Opera Institute. Daniels is an associate professor for voice at BU and formerly oversaw the institute.