Mary Mills (soprano)

Mary Elizabeth Mills (born 1964) is an American opera singer.

Mills was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, but moved to Dallas, Texas as a young child. In Dallas, she attended Hyer Elementary School, Arch H. McCulloch Middle School and Highland Park High School, graduating in 1982. In high school, she played the violin in the orchestra, sang in the Lads and Lassies Choir and as a senior was the female lead in the musical The Boyfriend. She also sang in youth choirs at Highland Park Presbyterian Church, whose Crusader Choir, with her as a soloist, made an album to raise money and toured Asia and Europe.

In The Dallas Morning News when returning to Dallas to perform, she claimed she didn't know that she had any real singing talent until late in her high school years. Mary Mills graduated from the University of Cincinnati – College-Conservatory of Music in 1986 and received a Masters of Music at Yale in 1988. Among her numerous competitions and awards, she has won the Metropolitan National Council Auditions, the George London Award, Maria Callas Debut Artist of the Year Award at Dallas Opera, Washington Opera Singer of the Year, Florida Grand Opera Singer of the Year, and the Diva award from Opera Company of Philadelphia. She has collaborated with some of the most notable conductors including Yves Abel, Antonio Allemandi, Marco Armiliato, Gary Bertini, James Conlin,John Demain, Sian Edwards, Mark Elder, Christoph Eschenbach, John Fiore, Ivan Fischer, Neemi Järvi, Armin Jordan, Jiri Kout, Emmanuel Krivine, Jacques Lacombe, Fabio Luisi, Marc Minkowski, Kirill Petrenko, Carlo Rizzi, Julius Rudel, Donald Runnicles and Ulf Schirmer.

Career highlights include her many engagements with the Metropolitan Opera, notably her acclaimed debut as Zdenka in Strauss’s Arabella, Micaela in Bizet’s Carmen and Mimì in Franco Zeffirelli’s staging of Puccini’s La Bohème as well as in Central Park for the Met in the Parks Series. Ms. Mills has repeated Mimì in Berlin, Detroit, Santiago de Chile, Antwerp (Belgium), Strasbourg, Geneva and San Francisco. At the San Francisco Opera she made her debut while an Adler Fellow as the 15-year-old Girl in Lulu, and created the role of Cecile de Volanges for their production of the world premiere of Dangerous Liaisons, which was taped for broadcast on PBS and for commercial release. At San Francisco Opera, she has sung over eighteen productions, including La Bohème, Die Zauberflöte, Carmen and Arabella, among others.

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