A Maria Ewing Playlist

Two months ago, almost to the day, actress Rebecca Hall saw her directorial debut, “Passing,” premiere on Netflix. It was a personal project for Hall, whose mother—the soprano Maria Ewing—had a family history that mirrored the plot of the 1929 novel on which Hall based her film. In fact, Hall learned more about that family history in the process of making a movie about a Black woman passing as white, which Ewing’s father had also done. 

It was a gift for Ewing, who died on January 9 after a short illness. “My mother has a sort of freedom around this now that she didn’t have,” Hall told NPR in November. “She said to me quite recently, ‘What you have given me is a kind of liberation. You’ve liberated us all and you’ve liberated my father. What he could never speak about, you have done for him.’” 

Ewing didn’t sing roles. She moved into them. She inhabited them, finding in the hidden recesses of each character their own unspoken truths and histories. She also revealed as much about herself in her parts as she did about the characters themselves. Simon Rattle once called her “the most interesting singing actress of the stage.” Leaving such a mark on each part—whether it was Mozart’s horny page, Bizet’s complex anti-heroine, or Strauss’s nymphette—was bound to make her a divisive performer. Not that she seemed to care about her critics. The work was fulfilling enough on its own.