Prominent Armenian-American singer Lili Chookasian dies aged 90

Lili Chookasian, an American singer who in the 1960s and afterward was among the most prominent contraltos in the world, died on Tuesday at her home in Branford, Conn. She was 90, The New York Times reports.

Ms. Chookasian was a principal singer with the Metropolitan Opera for a quarter-century, appearing there 290 times from 1962 to 1986. She also sang in recital and was a soloist with many of the world’s leading orchestras.

Critics and operagoers hailed Ms. Chookasian as a “real contralto.” Where many contraltos are endowed with the lightish, dusky equivalent of a viola, her voice — immense, deep, velvety and burnished — put a cello at her command. She was also praised for her sensitive musicianship, powerful dramatic characterizations and impeccable diction. (She had grown up speaking Armenian.)

Ms. Chookasian made her Met debut in 1962, at 40, in the role of La Cieca in “La Gioconda,” by Ponchielli; the production also starred Franco Corelli, Robert Merrill and Zinka Milanov.

She was perhaps most closely associated with the work of Gian Carlo Menotti. At the Met, she sang the Maharanee in the United States premiere of his opera “The Last Savage.” On loan from the company, she made her New York City Opera debut in 1963 as Madame Flora, the title character of his two-act opera “The Medium.”

Her other Met roles included Amneris in Verdi’s “Aida,” Erda in Wagner’s “Rheingold” and “Siegfried” and Mamma Lucia in Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana.”

The daughter of Armenian immigrants, Lillian Phoebe Chookasian was born in Chicago on Aug. 1, 1921; her father was a machinist and toolmaker. A gifted singer from girlhood on, she made her professional debut in the 1940s as a soloist on the radio show “Hymns of All Churches,” broadcast nationally on the Columbia network.

Ms. Chookasian began her career as a concert singer, making a notable appearance in 1955 as a soloist in Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony with the Chicago Symphony under Bruno Walter. She made her operatic debut in 1959, as Adalgisa in Bellini’s “Norma” with the Arkansas State Opera and later studied with the distinguished soprano Rosa Ponselle.

In 1961, Ms. Chookasian was chosen by the conductor Thomas Schippers to appear with the New York Philharmonic in Prokofiev’s cantata “Alexander Nevsky.” Her long solo, as a girl searching the battlefield for the body of her lover, drew wide critical praise; her performance is preserved in a Columbia recording.

If Ms. Chookasian arrived at the Met somewhat on the late side, there was ample reason. Offered a contract with the company for the 1961 season, she demurred, saying she did not want to leave her husband and three children.

She was by then also a two-time survivor of breast cancer, an illness that, given the prevailing taboos of the era, she did not disclose to her managers. The illness was first diagnosed in 1956, and Ms. Chookasian was given six months to live. She underwent a mastectomy that year and a second in 1961, after the cancer recurred.

As was widely reported, Ms. Chookasian, making her Met debut on March 9, 1962, sang so well that she received an immense ovation after her aria “Voce di Donna.”

Her last performance with the Met was on May 17, 1986, as Gertrude in Gounod’s “Roméo et Juliette.”

After retiring from the opera stage, Ms. Chookasian spent many years as a faculty member at the Yale School of Music. She had previously taught at Northwestern University.

Ms. Chookasian’s husband, George Gavejian, whom she married in 1941, died in 1987. She is survived by two sons, John and Paul; a daughter, Valerie Klutch; 11 grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.