Johnson, Mary Jane
Johnson, Mary Jane
Johnson, Mary Jane, American soprano; b. Pampa, Tex., March 22, 1950. She studied at West Tex. A. & M. Univ. In 1981 she made her operatic debut in N.Y. singing Weber’s Agathe. In 1982 she made her first appearance at the Santa Fe Opera as Rosalinde, and subsequently sang there with fine success in later seasons. In 1983 she appeared as Freia in Das Rheingold at the San Francisco Opera. She made regular appearances at the Washington (D.C.) Opera from 1984, and at the Cincinnati Opera from 1986. After singing Desdemona at the Pittsburgh Opera and Helen of Troy in Mefistofeleat the Lyric Opera in Chicago in 1991, she was engaged as Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth at Milan’s La Scala and at the Op éra de la Bastille in Paris in 1992. In 1996 she sang Janacek’s Emilia Marty at the Vancouver Opera. Among her other roles of note were Mozart’s Countess, Leonore, Senta, Alice in Falstaff, Salome, and Tosca.
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire