Opera and Broadway Star Shirley Verrett Dies at 79

Shirley Verrett, the internationally renowned opera star who later gained fame on Broadway by playing Nettie Fowler in the acclaimed 1994 Lincoln Center Theater production of Carousel, has died at age 79, according to The Associated Press.

Verrett made her professional opera debut in New York City Opera’s 1958 production of Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson’s Lost in the Stars. She performed on opera stages around the world for the next four decades in such productions as Carmen, Norma, Tosca, Fidelio, Othello, Samson et Delilah, L’Africaine, Les Troyens,The Siege of Cornith and Un Ballo in Maschera.

She also appeared in 1999 in an Off-Broadway revival of the musical In Dahomey.

In 2003, she published a memoir: I Never Walk Alone: The Autobiography of an American Singer.