Gail Robinson, a soprano who sang with the Metropolitan Opera for nearly two decades starting in 1970 and who went on to a career as a teacher and guide to emerging singers, notably as a director of the Met’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, died on Sunday in Lexington, Ky. She was 62.

The cause was complications from rheumatoid arthritis, said Everett McCorvey, the director of opera at the University of Kentucky, where Ms. Robinson became a professor of voice in 2000.

Born on Aug. 7, 1946, in Jackson, Tenn., Ms. Robinson was a winner in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions at 19. In early 1970 she made her Met debut in a small role in Mozart’s “Magic Flute.” Her gifts for the coloratura soprano repertory emerged four months later when on short notice she substituted for Roberta Peters in the title role of Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” on a Met tour in Detroit, singing opposite Plácido Domingo.

In January 1971, at 24, she sang her first Met Lucia at the house. Reviewing the performance for The New York Times, the critic Allen Hughes wrote that Ms. Robinson’s “negotiation of the coloratura was beautifully articulated, and she inflected the cantilena arias expressively.”

Recalling that performance in a 1997 interview with The Times, Ms. Robinson said the experience was intimidating. Stepping into Lucia’s costume for the first time, she saw the name Joan Sutherland, the great Lucia of the time, sewn into the waistband.

“I withstood it,” she said, “but I don’t recommend it.”

As her career continued she sang with the Met, the Berlin State Opera, the Munich State Opera, and Opéra de Genève and other companies in roles that included Rosina in “Barber of Seville,” Gilda in “Rigoletto,” Pamina in “The Magic Flute,” and Constanze in “The Abduction From the Seraglio”; she appeared alongside Luciano Pavarotti, Sherrill Milnes, Alfredo Kraus and others.

Health problems curtailed her stage career. She sang her last of more than 200 performances with the Met in 1987.

But during the 1990s, as the director of the company’s National Council Auditions and also in her post as the head of the Met’s young artist program, she nurtured many singers who have gone on to major careers, including Dwayne Croft, Stephanie Blythe, Christine Goerke, Paul Groves and Heidi Grant Murphy.

As the holder of an endowed professorship at the University of Kentucky she was chairwoman of the vocal department and worked closely with the opera program. Speaking of her approach to teaching in the 1997 Times interview, she said, “In this field there is nothing to be gained by being the youngest or getting there the fastest.” There is much to be accomplished, she added, “by taking your time, by acquiring a solid technique, musical preparation, historical information and, most of all, psychological maturity.”

Ms. Robinson is survived by her husband, Henno Lohmeyer; her mother, Hazel Robinson of Memphis; a son, Patrick Lohmeyer; a daughter, Jennifer Poney; and three grandchildren.

Though Ms. Robinson’s students in Lexington appreciated her Southern charm and motherly care, they were also impressed with her connections. One former student, Sheri Phelps, told The Lexington Herald-Leader that Professor Robinson was “the only person on faculty who had James Levine on speed dial.”

 

The family has requested that memorial gifts in memory of Ms. Robinson be made to the Lexington Opera Society for the purpose of supporting the Kentucky District Metropolitan Opera National Auditions.

Make your check payable to
Lexington Opera Society
and mail it to
Post Office Box 8463
Lexington, KY 40533-8463

For more information call 859-266-4574

Lexington Opera Society is a 501(c)3 Tax Exempt organization.
Lexington Opera Society will send you a tax acknowledgement letter for your donation.