Marilyn Tyler
Soprano who staged lavish productions for the Shah of Iran
MARILYN TYLER, who has died aged 91, was an American soprano who sang with Scottish Opera and at the BBC Proms, but who became caught up in the events of the Iranian revolution in 1979.
She had sung roles such as Violetta in La Traviata, Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Hermann Prey, and Constanze in Die Entführung aus dem Serail. However, by 1978 her performing career was drawing to a natural close when she learnt that Empress Farah was seeking a stage director for the western-style Iran Opera. She told of a marvellous year spent staging lavish productions in Tehran with international casts. Often the Shah and his wife would be in the audience.
When the regime collapsed and the Islamic republic was established in February 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini ordered the removal of all traces of western culture. As antiamerican fervour swept the country, Marilyn Tyler maintained a low profile. She told the Albuquerque Journal how she stayed in Tehran for nine “very terrifying” months before finding a safe way out – to Pakistan.
Marilyn Tyler was born in Brooklyn, New York, on December 6 1926 to a Romanian-jewish family of singers and actors. Her mother had been a gifted soprano, while a grandfather acted in Yiddish theatre.
Young Marilyn studied harp and organ at the High School of Music and Art in New York before winning a scholarship to Manhattan School of Music, where she took a masters in piano and voice. A Fulbright scholarship took her to Milan, where she found that there were plenty of opportunities to perform in Europe. “I sang in the US and Canada, but I was very happy in Europe,” she said. “I was performing in the major houses and I was well known, so why go home?”
In 1964 she starred as Donna Elvira in Scottish Opera’s production of Don Giovanni, when a critic commented that she was “capable of generating the proper emotional energy”, but lamented that “the actual singing, however, was rather gusty and uneven”. The following year she took part in the Proms premiere of Hans Werner Henze’s cantata Novae de
infinito laudes, conducted by the composer.
In the 1960s Marilyn Tyler lived in the Netherlands, making a point of learning to speak Dutch. During one season she made 34 round trips between Amsterdam, where she had a contract with the Dutch National Opera, and Vienna, where she was a favourite at the Volksoper. She was also seen on Dutch television, accompanying herself on piano in works such as Gershwin’s Summertime from Porgy and Bess.
Despite her success, by the late 1970s Marilyn Tyler felt that the curtain was coming down on her career. “Male singers can perform indefinitely, but women are controlled by their hormones,” she declared, not entirely accurately. “After a certain age it is inelegant for a woman to sing romantic soprano roles.”
After escaping from Iran, Marilyn Tyler spent two years as director of the Pakistan-american Cultural Centre in Karachi, but the political climate was no more stable. After an attack on the US Embassy she returned to her homeland, teaching briefly at Jacksonville University, Florida. She soon settled in Albuquerque, New Mexico, feeling at home in the desert because it reminded her of Iran, and in 1984 joined the University of New Mexico as director of operatic studies, remaining there for 26 years.
Marilyn Tyler was twice married, to a German conductor and to a Pakistani industrialist; both marriages were dissolved. She spent her later years with George Simson, a retired doctor. He died in 2006.
Marilyn Tyler, born December 6 1926, died December 20 2017