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Maralin Niska, sensational opera singer – obituary
Maralin Niska, who has died aged 89, was an American soprano with a delicious voice and screen-goddess looks who made headlines by stripping to the waist in a production of Janácek’s The Makropoulos Affair for New York City Opera in 1970.
She was playing the role of Emilia Marty, a woman who had taken a potion giving her immortality but who, after 342 years, was seeking the original formula, the only thing that could bring her existence to a close. During that long life she has enjoyed the attention of a great many lovers, but is now rejecting the advances of Baron Prus, removing her robe to reveal the wounds inflicted by a previous admirer.
Although in the stripping scene she had her back to the audience and only disrobed as far as her waist, the combination of the partial nudity, the sensuousness of her performance and the intensity of Frank Corsaro’s staging caused something of a stir. The New York Times described her as sensational, adding: “It was clear that her mother was a vampire, her father a lycanthrope.”
The singer herself professed to being undisturbed by the attention. “It didn’t bother me to do it,” she said, while preparing to reprise the role a year later. “I wanted to drop the robe farther, but there were objections.”
While she was baring all, the television screens on stage were depicting body doubles of her character with various lovers – “filmed fornication”, as The New York Times called it. She later said that, if asked, she would have performed those love-making scenes with her husband for the camera.
Maralin Fae Dice was born at San Pedro, California, on November 16 1926. Her mother was a nurse and her father a building contractor. She had piano and violin lessons as a child, but studied English Literature at the University of California Los Angeles.
Afterwards she sang for pleasure and taught at a high school – an occupation that perhaps prepared her for the role of the Governess in Britten’s The Turn of the Screw. “I think of myself as rather prim,” she said in 1971 when asked about the connection, perhaps forgetting the role that had made her a star a year before.
She soon gave up teaching and started taking singing lessons, flirted with converting from Presbyterianism to Judaism, and refused suggestions that she should study in Europe. “I don’t have any desire to go,” she declared. Soon she was picking up small-town opera work, with rented costumes and little rehearsal, but was eventually selected by the Metropolitan Opera National Company, a touring arm of the Met, to star in Robert Carlyle’s Susannah.
When that company closed she was hired by New York City Opera, with whom she appeared in 29 roles, more than any other member of the company. At the Met she sang with Renato Scotto, Plácido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti, taking part in the first Live from the Met telecast (La Bohème) with Pavarotti in 1977.
Although known for The Makropoulos Affair and The Turn of the Screw, she was anxious that her other roles be remembered. “I’ve learnt 40 roles in 12 years,” she said in 1971. “I try to keep a balance between Mozart, Verdi, Puccini and modern … I’m afraid to get pigeonholed.”
In the 1980s Maralin Niska retired to Santa Fe, where she taught privately. She was divorced from her first husband, Henry Niska, a fireman. In 1970 she married secondly William Mullen, a violinist, who survives her.
Maralin Niska, born November 16 1926, died July 9 2016