EILEEN FARRELL: The possessor of one of the most magnificent soprano voices of the past 50 years, the American singer Eileen Farrell, who died on March 16th aged 82, impressed conductors and audiences alike with her powerful and ebullient presence. Like a few of her contemporaries, she managed to straddle the classical and popular fields and be respected by both in a manner that predated crossover as we know it today. Indeed, she refused forcefully to be categorised.
Although she spent five successful, though often controversial, seasons at the Metropolitan in New York (1961-'66), she gained most of her fame from performing in recitals and concerts, and on the radio, where she began her career with her own show, Eileen Farrell Sings, in 1940. It lasted seven years and brought her wide audiences, including Leopold Stokowski, with whom she recorded Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder, and made her New York Philharmonic concert debut in 1949. Adding the singing voice for Eleanor Parker in the film Interrupted Melody (1955), the story of the soprano Marjorie Lawrence and her battle with cancer, enabled her to present Isolde, Butterfly and Waltzing Matilda to a general listenership.
By that time, however, Eileen Farrell had outfaced sceptics, who thought she could not transfer her talent into the serious field. She began a recital tour in 1950 which had its climax in New York at Carnegie Hall. It caused a sensation, and more New York Philharmonic engagements followed.
Her mentor was the orchestra's then music director, Dimitri Mitropoulos; in 1951, she sang Marie in a celebrated Carnegie Hall performance of Berg's Wozzeck under him. Later, when Leonard Bernstein was the orchestra's chief, she essayed Brunnhilde and Isolde, roles that by rights she should have taken on stage. A critic wrote: "Note for note her voice is perhaps the most flawless instrument as exists in the world today. Her glowing trumpet tone was like a fiery angel claiming the millennium."
Her official opera début was postponed until 1956, when she undertook Leonora in Il Trovatore for San Francisco Opera, with no less a tenor than Björling as her Manrico, following it in the same house in 1958 with Cherubini's Medea, one of her favourite roles, and Strauss's Ariadne the following year.
The feisty Rudolf Bing, ruler of the Met, finally engaged her for the 1960-'61 season as Gluck's Alceste, which brought her comparisons with the legendary Flagstad. After that she gave 45 performances of six roles there, ending with Maddalena in Giordano's Andrea Chénier in 1966.
Her European career was launched with a programme of concert arias in London in 1959. The same year she appeared at the Spoleto Festival, giving a recital, and in the Verdi Requiem.
When Louis Armstrong fell ill, she caused a sensation by standing in for him, singing ballads and blues. But that was the very epitome of Eileen Farrell's acumen in tailoring her career to what was most in demand. Her first record for American Columbia was of popular repertory.
Eileen Farrell was born on February 11th, 1920, in Willimantic, Connecticut. Her parents sang in vaudeville as the Singing O'Farrells. They then supervised students in music and drama at Connecticut University. The young Eileen Farrell appeared in operetta at High School, starting with HMS Pinafore. Then she travelled to New York for voice coaching with Merle Alcock, a contralto at the Met, and Eleanor McLellan before she found fame on the radio.
A curious combination of the serious and the cheeky, the Irish-American Eileen Farrell managed to triumph in a wider way than was then thought possible. She once appeared with comedienne Carol Burnett in a notorious skit called Three Little Pigs, but that did not deter her from singing the great roles in opera with splendid strength and artistry. That was exemplified in recordings she made in London in 1957 for EMI, reissued - to renewed acclaim - in 1996.
In a concert appearance in New York in 1960, a gala in honour of Lily Pons, she shared the podium with Renata Tebaldi. The standing ovation went to Eileen Farrell for her singing of the extraordinarily taxing Ocean! thou mighty monster from Weber's Oberon. Hearing her singing it on CD one can well imagine the effect she made - effortless projection and complete conviction.
After cutting back on performing in the mid-1970s, Eileen Farrell taught classical and popular voice at Indiana State University.
In 1999, she wrote her autobiography, Can't Help Singing, with the help of Brian Kellow.
Her husband, Robert Reagan, a New York police officer whom she married in 1946, died in 1986; she is survived by a son and daughter.
Eileen Farrell: born ; died, March 2002