Soprano who premiered War Requiem in the US and whose voice graced the Met, has passed away aged 94.

American soprano Phyllis Curtin has died aged 94. She was renowned for both her operatic roles, which included works by Britten and Carlisle Floyd, and her contribution to American art song through works by composers such as Copland and Rorem.

The daughter of two Church musicians, Curtin was born in Clarksburg, West Virginia in 1921. She performed in the American premiere of Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes while still a student at Wellesley College, Boston, where she was majoring in political science, taking singing lessons on the side.

She went on to perform in a number of productions by the New England Opera Theater in Boston, including Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades and Britten’s Albert Herring, going on to make her debut with the New York City Opera in 1953, in the American premiere of Gottfried von Einem’s Der Prozess. She would perform regularly with the company over the next ten years. She first performed with the Metropolitan Opera in 1961 and throughout the 1960s, she performed at opera houses around the world, including at the Vienna State Opera, La Scala and Glyndebourne.

Known for her interpretations of new music, she sang in the American premieres of both Britten’s War Requiem and Shostakovich’s Symphony No 14 and created the role of Catherine Earnshaw in Carlisle Floyd’s Wuthering Heights as well as the titular role inarguably his most popular work, Susannah, a contemporary take on the biblical tale of a woman accused of impropriety by corrupt church elders.

Later in her career, she was highly regarded as a teacher. She became an artist in residence at the Tanglewood Music Centre in 1964 and taught at the Aspen School of Music, the Berkshire Music Centre. She was appointed Dean of Yale University’s School of Music in 1974, before becoming Dean of Boston University’s School of the Arts in 1981. Curtin retired from Boston University in 1997 but continued to teach there and overseas. Tanglewood celebrated her 90th birthday by honouring her in their Tanglewood on Parade concert in 2011.

Opera critic Peter Davis described Curtin’s singing and career in his book The American Opera Singer. “Her voice may have lacked the immediately identifiable timbral characteristics that all the greatest singers have, but its intonational purity and attractive silvery sheen adapted to an amazing variety of styles and the secure technical base of her method never deserted her, right up into her mid-sixties.”