OperaObituaryErin Wall obituary
Soprano whose heartfelt performances through a wide repertoire made her a favourite with audiencesThe Canadian-American soprano Erin Wall, who has died aged 44 of complications resulting from metastatic breast cancer, was highly regarded for her heartfelt performances in repertoire ranging from Mozart through Richard Strauss to Britten and Barber. Diagnosed with cancer in 2017, she maintained a demanding operatic schedule and by a poignant coincidence her death is memorialised by the simultaneous appearance of two major recordings, Massenet’s Thaïs and Britten’s Peter Grimes, both recorded last year.
In both the title role of Thaïs and as Ellen Orford in Britten’s Peter Grimes, her voice gleams with the passion and empathy she habitually brought to her performances. The part of Thaïs was one of many she had undertaken with the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto, bringing it in 2011 to the Edinburgh festival where it proved to be one of the highlights of the season. In the new recording, too, she was successful, by virtue of her appealing tone and intelligent musicianship, in teasing out the subtler aspects of Massenet’s courtesan-turned-saint.
London audiences were fortunate to be able to see her Ellen Orford, when Edward Gardner brought the same forces as on the recording, including his own Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, to the Royal Festival Hall last year. Not only did Wall deploy her radiant tone to imbue the character with a sense of unimpeachable goodness, but her characterisation also encompassed the crushing, life-draining disillusionment Ellen suffers, making her the ideal foil to Stuart Skelton’s alternately rugged and visionary Grimes.
Though of Canadian birth, Wall held dual citizenship in Canada and the US. She began her professional career in 2001 as a member of the Ryan Opera Center, the young artists’ development programme at the Lyric Opera, Chicago. Vancouver was her home town, but it was Chicago where she delighted audiences, colleagues and critics alike with a series of prominent roles: Marguerite in Faust, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, Freia in Das Rheingold, Pamina in The Magic Flute, Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, Konstanze in The Abduction from the Seraglio, Helena in the Lyric premiere of Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, Antonia in Les Contes d’Hoffmann and Elettra in Idomeneo.
Of the Mozart roles, the fire and grace she brought to Donna Anna made it a particular favourite with audiences, while as Elettra she “threw vocal thunderbolts” as the avenging princess, according to one reviewer. The most notable of the qualities that characterised her singing included the ample, creamy tone she unfurled, even throughout the compass and deployed with agile coloratura, seamless phrasing and powerful articulation.
Born in Calgary, Alberta, to American parents, Suzanne (nee Hill) and Michael Wall, both professional musicians, Erin studied piano at the Vancouver Academy of Music, then voice at the Western Washington University in Bellingham and Rice University in Houston. Not long after joining the Chicago programme, she appeared at St Paul’s Cathedral, in the City of London festival, as the soprano soloist in Britten’s War Requiem and in the following year was a finalist in the 2003 Cardiff Singer of the World competition.
In addition to her appearances in Chicago, she was a regular at Santa Fe Opera, taking the title roles in Strauss’s Daphne and Arabella and Barber’s Vanessa. She also sang with the Metropolitan Opera, making her debut in 2009 as an acclaimed Donna Anna, the Canadian Opera Company, and many other houses in North America and Europe.
She appeared five times at the BBC Proms: in Tippett’s Midsummer Marriage (2013), memorable for the raptness of Jenifer’s lyrical outpouring in Act I; in Elgar’s The Kingdom (2014), when she was no less glorious in the soprano soloist’s aria The Sun Goeth Down; twice in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (2017 and 2018), and in 2018 in the War Requiem.
She was a soprano soloist in three recordings of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony (under Pierre Boulez, Michael Tilson Thomas and Yannick Nézet-Séguin). Her recording of Strauss’s valedictory Four Last Songs with Andrew Davis and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, serves as a poignant testimony to a much-loved, deeply admired singer.
She is survived by her husband, Roberto Mauro, their children, Michael and Julia, her sister, Shannon, and her parents.
Erin Marie Wall, opera singer, born 4 November 1975; died 8 October 2020
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaJ%2BcpK%2BiuI5rZ2toX6O8t3uPb2aeqpmjerity6VkqJqZqcKivtg%3D