Whipped Cream Difficulties

Erin Wall.

She was a soprano.

Lyric Opera [of Chicago] was an artistic home base for Ms. Wall, who received her professional start as a member of the company’s prestigious young artist program, now known as the Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center. Chicago was the site of the dramatic season-opening performance that jolted her nascent career in 2004, when she jumped in with just a few hours’ notice to replace an ill colleague as Donna Anna in Mozart’s “Don Giovanni.”

…

From Rice, she entered Lyric Opera’s young artist program in 2001. She swiftly established herself as a rising talent: a lyric soprano with a full-bodied yet agile voice and dazzling facility in her top register. It was an instrument ideal for youthful roles like Marguerite in Gounod’s “Faust,” which she sang in Chicago in 2003, as well as Mozart’s Donna Anna, Pamina (in “The Magic Flute”) and Konstanze (in “The Abduction From the Seraglio”).
“The voice definitely evolved,” Michael Benchetrit, Ms. Wall’s manager, said in an interview. “The middle and lower parts became richer with time.”
This evolution came as she increasingly took on Strauss roles that benefited from more tonal opulence, like Arabella, Chrysothemis (in “Elektra”) and Daphne. When she starred in “Daphne” at the Santa Fe Opera in 2007, Mr. Benchetrit said, the effect was overwhelming.

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Ms. Wall made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 2009, as Donna Anna. She returned as Helena in Britten’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in 2013 and Arabella in 2014. Though acclaimed in staged opera, she concentrated more of her time on concert work, in pieces like Strauss’s “Four Last Songs,” Britten’s “War Requiem,” Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and, especially, Mahler’s mighty choral Eighth Symphony, in which she was captured on several recordings.
She was a frequent partner of prominent conductors, including Donald Runnicles, Christoph Eschenbach, Michael Tilson Thomas, Andris Nelsons and, perhaps most notably, Mr. [Andrew] Davis [Lyric Opera’s music director – DB]. Earlier this year, he and Ms. Wall released a recording of Massenet’s “Thaïs,” an opera they also performed together in concert at the Edinburgh Festival in 2011.

She was only 44 years old. Cancer got her.

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