Mary Miller - Variations from THE TOREODOR (Adam)

Mary Miller was an Australian soprano who, at age 16 in 1943, featured “on stage“ at St Kilda Palais Pictures daily screenings of the Jeanette MacDonald film “Smilin’ Through“. In November 1945, she gave her first recital in Melbourne’s Assembly Hall and sang in Sydney Town Hall in early 1946. She sang Gilda in a concert performance of RIGOLETTO in 1947 and won the ’Sun Aria’ competition in 1948 with the highest score ever awarded - 95 out of 100! It is said she was offered an engagement at La Scala, Milan, but could not accept because she had been contracted to sing Queen of the Night in THE MAGIC FLUTE, for Gertrude Johnson’s National Opera summer season in Melbourne. A month after winning the competition, and five days before the National Opera engagement, she collapsed with severe abdominal pain, and was taken to hospital where an emergency operation found advanced cancer, and died January 8th 1949, at the age of 23. Here she sings, with accuracy and charm