Soprano debuted at the Met
Roberta Peters, who debuted at the Metropolitan Opera at age 20 on five hours’ notice and became a reigning soprano of her era, delighting audiences for decades with performances on stage, in commercials and on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” died Jan. 18 at an assisted living facility in Rye, N.Y. Shewas 86.
The cause was disease, said Paul Fields.
Groomed since childhood for a career on stage, although she had not yet sung on one, Peters was slated to appear at the Met as the Queen of theNight in “TheMagic Flute” in1951.
But on Nov. 17, 1950, soprano Nadine Conner, who was to sing Zerlina in that evening’s performance of “Don Giovanni,” came down with food poisoning, according to the New York DailyNews. (Peters and her familywere already looking forward to attending the performance, in the standingsection.)
Rudolf Bing, the Met’s newly installed general manager, had a crisis on his hands and called Peters to ask if she could relieve it.
“Can you sing tonight?” he inquired, in a 3 p.m. phone call. With confidence that she recognized years later as extraordinary, Peters assured him that she could.
“It was the first time I’d ever sung professionally anywhere, and there I was, pushed out on the stage to sing at the Met,” she told The Associated Press in 1985.
With that, Peters, the daughter of a hat maker and a shoe salesman, was transformed into Zerlina, the peasant. The young singer’s parents received upgraded box seats for the occasion.
“Shewaswonderful,” the conductor, Fritz Reiner, later told theNewYorkHerald Tribune. “Areally gifted girl. Her fine preparation should be a lesson to other young American singers. When the chance came, she was qualified.”
That performance marked the first of more than 500 appearances by Peters at the Met over 35 years. She also sang at the Vienna State Opera, at London’s Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, before U.S. presidents and on TV programs including Sullivan’s show, “The Voice of Firestone” and “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson.
In one unforgettable commercial, she belted the Chock full o’Nuts coffee jingle in full operatic attire, and full-on operatic vocal power. In another, for American Express, she flagged a cab, calling out “Taxi!” in her soprano.
Her most noted roles at the Met, besides her first two Mozartean parts, included Rosina in Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville,” Gilda in Verdi’s “Rigoletto” and Susanna in Mozart’s “TheMarriage of Figaro.”
In 1955, she played Oscar in the performance of Verdi’s “A Masked Ball” in which Marian Anderson, the acclaimed African American contralto, made her long-delayed debut at theMet.
Peters’s care with her voice allowed her to sing well into her later years on the opera stage, as a recitalist and in musicals. In 1998, she received the NationalMedal of Arts.
Roberta Peterman — Peters was her stage name — was born in the Bronx on May 4, 1930.
Peters was briefly married to the operatic baritone Robert Merrill and continued performing with him after their amicable divorce. Her husband of 55 years, Bertram Fields, died in 2010. Survivors include two sons, Paul Fields of Bethesda, Md., and Bruce Fields of Westport, Conn.; and four grandchildren. Parkinson’s her son