Talk:Benita Valente

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Festival appearances include Tanglewood, Aspen, Ravinia, Grand Tetons, Santa Fe, Vienna, Edinburgh, and Lyon.

Valente trained with the great German soprano Lotte Lehmann, both privately and at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, where she met Marilyn Horne. In 1955, she won a scholarship to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she studied with Martial Singher. She made her formal debut in 1960 at the Marboro Music Festival in Vermont and, in the same year, made her New York concert debut. She won the Metropolitan Opera Auditions in 1960 and pursued further studies with Margaret Harshaw. She then sang with the Freiburg im Breisgau Opera, making her debut there as Pamina in Die Zauberflöte in 1962. After appearances with the Nuremberg Opera in 1966, she returned to the USA and established herself as a versatile recitalist, soloist with orchestra, and opera singer. Her interpretation of Pamina was especially well received, and it was in that role that she made her long-awaited Metropolitan Opera debut in New York in September 1973. Her repertoire also includes the roles of Gilda in Rigoletto, Nanetta in Falstaff, Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro, Ilia in Idomeneo, and Almirena in Rinaldo. Other roles include Euridice in Orfeo ed Euridice at Santa Fe, the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro in Washington, and Dalila in Samson et Dalila Florence.