Mills, Erie
Mills, Erie
Mills, Erie, American soprano; b. Granite City, 111., June 22, 1953. She attended the National Music Camp in Interlochen, Mich., then studied voice with Karl Trump at the Coll. of Wooster, Ohio, with Grace Wilson at the Univ. of 111., and with Elena Nikolaidi. In 1979 she made her professional operatic debut as Ninette in The Love for 3 Oranges at the Chicago Lyric Opera; on Oct. 13, 1982, she made her first appearance with the N.Y.C. Opera as Cunegonde in Candide, and subsequently sang there regularly; she made her Metropolitan Opera debut in N.Y. as Blondchen in Die Entführung aus dem Serail on Nov. 26, 1987. She also made guest appearances with the Cincinnati Opera, Cleveland Opera, San Francisco Opera, Minnesota Opera, Opera Soc. of Washington, D.C., Santa Fe Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Hamburg State Opera, La Scala in Milan, and Vienna State Opera. On March 17, 1989, she made her N.Y. recital debut. On Oct. 5, 1992, she sang Orazio in the U.S. premiere of Handel’s Muzio in N.Y. She portrayed Zerlina in Milwaukee in 1996. Among her other prominent roles are Rossini’s Rosina, Donizetti’s Lucia, Offenbach’s Olympia, Johann Strauss’s Adele, and Richard Strauss’s Zerbinetta.
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis Mclntire