1. Maria Louise Ewing was born in Detroit, Michigan, on March 27,1950.
17 Facts About Maria Ewing
1. 2.
Maria Ewing was the youngest of four daughters of Hermina Ewing, nee Veraar, a Dutch-born homemaker, and Norman Isaac Ewing, an electrical engineer at a steel company.
3.
Maria Ewing's father claimed to be of Sioux descent, but he was the son of parents who were each mixed-race, part European and part African.
4.
Maria Ewing was a descendant of Bazabeel Norman, a notable Black veteran of the American Revolutionary War.
5.
Maria Ewing was unembarrassed by her racial make-up, regarding her African roots not with shame but with pride.
6.
Maria Ewing's parents were both musical enthusiasts: her mother was a keen collector of classical recordings, and her father played the piano well enough to attract an audience of admiring neighbors.
7.
Maria Ewing auditioned for the role of Maddalena in a production of Rigoletto that was to be conducted by a young James Levine.
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James Levine 8.
Maria Ewing supported herself by working in offices and clothing stores.
9.
Maria Ewing's debut was as Rosina in an English-language production of Il barbiere di Siviglia in Detroit in 1970, staged by a company now known as the Michigan Opera Theatre.
10.
The first leading opera company that engaged Maria Ewing was San Francisco's.
11.
Maria Ewing was their Mercedes in Carmen in 1973, and their Sicle in Francesco Cavalli's Ormindo in 1974.
12.
Maria Ewing offered another Mozart trousers role in 1977, when she sang Idamante in his opera seria Idomeneo at the San Francisco Opera.
13.
The non-operatic music that Maria Ewing performed was as diverse as her theatrical repertoire: it included Berg's Sieben Fruhe Lieder, Berlioz's La damnation de Faust, Debussy's La damoiselle elue and Trois ballades de Francois Villon, Mozart's Great Mass in C minor and Verdi's Quattro pezzi sacri.
14.
Maria Ewing found her "delightful, provocative and very, very attractive; formidable too, but wonderfully funny".
15.
When Hall visited her in New York the following year, their friendship metamorphosed into romance: "I am deeply in love with Maria Ewing", he confided to his diary on Christmas Day.
16.
Maria Ewing never remarried, but in her later years she had a platonic relationship with Amir Hosseinpour, a Tehran-born director and choreographer.
17.
Maria Ewing died of cancer at her residence near Detroit on January 9,2022, at the age of 71.