Benita Valente

Lyric soprano Benita Valente was born in California and graduated from the Curtis Institute in 1960. Among her teachers were Lotte Lehmann and Margaret Harshaw, and although she made her debut at the Freiburg Opera in 1962, most of her singing career was based in the United States. Valente is highly regarded for her singing of Mozart; she was among the performers at the debut of Lincoln Center's 1966 Mostly Mozart Festival, and made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1973 as Pamina in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte in 1973. Valente is nonetheless very versatile, interpreting music rang...