Her Life
Her parents were both involved with opera in the San Francisco Bay Area; her mother, Marcia, was a contralto and music teacher and her father, Randolph, taught music in high school and college. She performed as a child in Engelbert Humperdinck's Hänsel & Gretel, as a gingerbread boy. She returned to opera after doing a charity performance of the same work at a prison, this time taking Hänsel's role. After this performance, she auditioned for the Met, at age 29.
While rehearsing in his opera Ashoka's Dream at Santa Fe in 1997, she met composer Peter Lieberson and married him two years later, changing her name to Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. Peter Lieberson flourished creatively in their relationship, composing for her Rilke Songs and Neruda Songs, both of which were issued in recordings.
She died after a long battle with breast cancer on July 3, 2006, at the age of 52 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Only a few years previously, she had nursed her sister through her final illness with the same disease. Her husband, Peter, fell ill with cancer the following year, dying in April 2011.
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