Kathleen Battle

American soprano, vastly gifted and a fiercely perfectionistic lyric coloratura. The youngest of seven children, the daughter of an Ohio steelworker, she grew up in an all-black neighborhood in a depressed area of Portsmouth, Ohio. Even as a small child, her voice was described by teachers as "angelic." He dad, who sang in a gospel choir, was her inspiration.

She sang at churches, at picnics and at high school and was encouraged by her music teacher to attend the Cincinnati Conservatory. She had never heard a symphony orchestra and did not even know who Maria Callas was. There were few blacks there and Battle herself had not gone to school with whites until she was 12. Nonetheless, she flourished. She could sight-read and could pull out the meaning in a score, and more, she could communicate with an audience.

Though her voice was deemed lovely, it was considered too small for opera. By age 24, she was teaching music in an inner-city school when conductor Thomas Schippers opened an audition to local singers. When she tried out, he promptly chose her to sing the soprano role in Brahms's "German Requiem" that summer at the Spoleto Festival in Italy. It was the turning point.

The next year she met James Levine, who would later join the Met, and they hit if off well. He soon began to engage her for concerts and to act as an informal coach and adviser. She sang "Susanna" in the New York opera in 1976. Levine was the music director at the Met when Battle auditioned for the company and was hired for a "beginner" role, that of the shepherd in "Tannhauser," making her debut on 18 September 1978.

By 1982, she was clearly moving into the superstar class. At 5'3" and a size 8, diminutive with sleek beauty, girlish charm and a pearly smooth and magnificent voice, her specialties were the soubrette, or servant, roles and those of the ingénue, the realm of coquette rather than that of show-stopping power. However her talent transcended and transformed the repertory.