Muriel Costa-Greenspon

Muriel Costa-Greenspon (December 1, 1937 in Detroit, Michigan – December 26, 2005 in New York City) was an American mezzo-soprano who had a lengthy career at the New York City Opera between 1963-1993. She portrayed a gallery of character roles that extended from twentieth-century works by Leonard Bernstein, Benjamin Britten, Carlisle Floyd, Lee Hoiby, Arthur Honegger, Gian Carlo Menotti, and Douglas Moore, to the contralto heroines of Gilbert and Sullivan, and comic scene-stealers by Puccini, Mozart, and Donizetti.

Born Muriel Greenspon in Detroit to deaf parents, she attended Cass Technical High School and later to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she earned bachelor's (1959) and master's (1960) degrees in vocal performance. She studied voice under Joseph Blatt at the University of Michigan and later with Sam Morgenstern in New York City. She made her professional debut with the Detroit Grand Opera Association at the Detroit Opera House as Miss Todd in The Old Maid and the Thief in 1960. Over the next decade she appeared with numerous opera companies around the United States, including performances at the Baltimore Opera Company, the Opera Company of Boston, the Connecticut Opera, the Dallas Opera, the Houston Grand Opera, the Philadelphia Grand Opera Company, and the San Antonio Grand Opera Festival among others.