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Katherine Ann Merriman (April 28, 1920[1] – July 22, 2012) was an Americanoperaticmezzo-soprano.
A native ofPittsburgh, Pennsylvania,[1] she performed with her pianist brother, J. Vick O'Brien (later president of the Pittsburgh National Bank, and father of Thomas H. O’Brien, retired president of PNC), in cafes and supper clubs in the Pittsburgh area. She studied singing with retired lyric sopranoAlexis Bassian[citation needed] in San Francisco and withLotte Lehmann[citation needed] in Los Angeles. By the age of twenty she was singing on Hollywood film soundtracks[1] and it was there that she was spotted byLaurence Olivier.[citation needed] He picked Merriman to accompany him and his wife, actressVivien Leigh, on a tour ofRomeo and Juliet, where she performed songs during the set changes.[citation needed]
Her voice was used in twoJeanette MacDonald movies, first in a chorus in Maytime (1937), then in a brief solo early in Smilin' Through (1941).
Merriman sang many roles both live and onradio under the baton ofArturo Toscanini between 1944 and 1953, while he was conductor of theNBC Symphony Orchestra.[1] Among the roles she sang with him, were Maddalena in Act IV of Verdi'sRigoletto, Emilia in Verdi'sOtello, Mistress Page in Verdi'sFalstaff, and thetrousers role of Orfeo in Act II ofGluck'sOrfeo ed Euridice and also sang in his first and only studio recording of Beethoven'sNinth Symphony, with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, in 1952. She was also featured as Dorabella in a 1956La Scala performance of Mozart'sCosì fan tutte, which was conducted by Toscanini's short-lived protégé,Guido Cantelli.[citation needed] She sang Mozart's Dorabella at San Francisco Opera in 1957.
Merriman recordedMahler'sDas Lied von der Erde three times, twice with the tenorErnst Haefliger and theConcertgebouw Orchestra. The 1957 recording was conducted byEduard van Beinum for thePhilips label, while the 1963 recording was conducted byEugen Jochum forDeutsche Grammophon (see discography in the external links). The latter recording was awarded theGrand Prix du Disque of theAcadémie Charles Cros. A third recording, with tenorFritz Wunderlich and theNDR Symphony Orchestra under conductorHans Schmidt-Isserstedt, was recorded live in Hamburg in April 1965, and released under different labels.
Merriman was particularly well received inthe Netherlands,[citation needed] where she met and married Dutch tenor Tom Brand, a widower with several children.[1] She retired from performing to care for the family in 1965.[citation needed] Brand died in 1970. After the children were grown, she maintained residences in Hawaii and California. She died at her home in Los Angeles on July 22, 2012 from natural causes, aged 92.[1]
